Edward Burtynsky - Oil

Oil, one of the most essential raw materials known to man, one that we use in everyday life and don't even realise. In our modern day and age we are using more and more oil to keep up to speed with the growing economy of our planet. 
Edward Burtynsky's Oil exhibition at the London Photographers Gallery addresses these issues through his images of the life cycle of oil. 

Oil Fields #19a - 

Belridge, California, USA, 2003 

This vast body of work has been in the making for nearly twenty years allowing Burtynsky to travel the world finding areas rich in oil that are being pushed to the very limit. 
The show its self was split up into three of the four sections, these were Extraction and Refinement, Transportation and Motor Culture and The End of Oil. 

As we move through this large body of work we are taken through the stages of oil and its life cycle. However in what way are we viewing this? Most would see this as a life to death progression, but in some ways it could be seen as a death to life story as well. 
In the words of Barthes "The Greeks entered into death backward: what they had before them was their past" 
The relevance that this has to this body of work is the idea is the idea that the use of oil is a circle, what is before the oil is its past as well as its future, as eventually it circles back around. 
Although with this in mind we might need to, once again look at Barthes Camera Lucida, and again at the idea of death and photography. "Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is a catastrophe"   

Shipbreaking #13 -Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000

Photography Meets Design

Commando Group (A group of people who specialize in visual identity, art direction, illustration and photography).

The objective of this project is to investigate the boundaries between photography and graphic design/illustration and hopefully produce something remarkable in the process. The original photographs were provided by photographer Damian Heinisch. - Tumblr 

The work produced by Heinish and the Commando Group has a strong fantasy feel linking it back to the idea if Kittelsen's work, however not only that the work has something else hidden away, something that is perhaps more apparent in Kittelsen's work. The strong element of darkness. On first inspection these creatures of the mountains are sweet, perhaps a child's illustration much like the Gruffalo. However when looking back at these images there is a fear of these creates some where in my mind,  the shear scale of them makes them feel powerful and domineering over the viewer. Image too is also an image that unnerves, the fact that the creature is crying. This emotion on a creature so big scares and questions, when that emotional what could something of that size do? 

Theodor Severin Kittelsen

However this work makes you feel you can see then creatures as defenders of the landscape. 

Mehmet Ozgur Smoke Art

While looking for inspiration for some of my own work I came across the work of Mehmet Ozgur and his work. As you might know his work is some what like the smoke art that I created in Photoshop some time ago. 
His work is magic, creating a serial and dream like state with in his images. What drew me to the work was the second image, this was the first that I ever saw. From here I looked into more of his work only to find that each image become more and more complex with new and exciting ways of capturing smoke in different forms. 
You can find more of his work here

Jules Ober Textured Landscape

While taking in part in an Adobe on-line course I have been able to read and take part in the weekly forums. While looking through I came across these images by Jules Ober. 

His images are cut into long rectangles are the area of the detail in the image. What makes these images is the way that you focus on one area of the image, the bamboo or the grass. The work really is more aesthetic then meaningful, but the way that your attention is captured works for the images very well. 

Layered Drawings - Nobuhiro Nakanishi

Nobuhiro Nakanishi works with photography and sculpture, creating large works that 'float' off the wall. The images a compressed much like the idea of a giant flip book. 

As the audience looks the the work, it begins to blend together creating silhouettes of the landscapes that are printed onto the  Plexiglass acrylic. 

"In a foggy landscape, we no longer see what we are usually able to see - the distance to the traffic light, the silhouette of the trees, the slope of the ground. Silhouettes, distance and horizontal sense all become vague. When we perceive this vagueness, the water inside the retina and skin dissolve outwardly toward the infinite space of the body surface. The landscape continues to flow, withholding us from grasping anything solid. By capturing spatial change and the infinite flow of time, I strive to produce art that create movement between the artwork itself and the viewer's experience of the artwork." -  Nobuhiro Nakanishi  

Facial Sculpture - Levi Van Veluw

The work of Levi Van Veluw is outstanding, its simply beyond words. The work is both sculpture, photography and insulation. The work is created from self portraits of Van Veluw, where he constructs landscapes onto his face. Other work that he has created in this way is self portraits using light, that sweeps the face in different formations. 

The work is just incredibel, Van Veluw become one 
with the surroundings that he creates that then become 
a part of him. Combining surrialsum with the his world 
of nature and surroundings.