Eyemazing: The New Collectible Art Photography

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HS: What emotional or psychological impulses do you work out for yourself by bringing these images into existence? TH: I choose to leave my works untitled because I would like the spectator to have his own thoughts, make his own story and fantasy about what is seen.Those are not necessarily the same thoughts that I had when making the work. What better role can photography play than that of the compassionate voyeur—allowing us to step out of our own limited lives and, at least for a moment, and pull us into someone else’s very different existence? The possibility of stimulating our understanding and compassion for another human’s condition, pushing the boundaries of our own contained world—this is ones of the most valuable roles that photography can fulfil. DH: It’s not so much about my desire to embrace the geriatric crowd but rather a newer project where I’m photographing my mother and her community down in Florida. My parents divorced in the 1970s and have since taken very different paths in their lives. My mother is a born-again Christian and it’s taken me many years to get my mind around that and begin to make pictures. It’s obviously quite difficult due to the fact that the very nature of who I am is counter to her spiritual belief system. We love one another…yet there’s so much that’s wrong. Much of this work is Florida is about what remains unspoken. Outwardly the work is playful and colourful. But in actuality it’s heavy and dark. They’re some of the hardest pictures to make. I feel very disconnected in those moments. have changed, and stories are often planned in advance miles away from where the story is unfolding.

Publication: Recent book by Joel Simpson, Playgrounds for the Mind: The Art of Geological Photography (2021) is completely devoted to geological art photography. Many of these images may also be found on joelsimpsonart.com. Samples of such images may also be found in Joel Simpson’s 2019 Nautilus-Gold-Award-winning book Earthforms: Intimate Portraits of Our Planet (earthforms.net).If he were a character in a fairy tale, he would probably be called the “Cheery Eccentric”. Anton Solomoukha might indeed enjoy that. Fairy tales – Little Red Riding Hood amongst others – fascinate this voluble painter-turned-photographer whose work breathes irony and erotic fantasy.

AS: Socialist Realism was actually very good for us artists! We could earn money by making official art! Each exhibition contributed to the Revolution, to industry, to the Kolkhoz, or to some other official cause and so our work was bought by the state (laughs). We were the elite!Stan Douglas is an established artist who has been represented at Documenta, the Venice Biennale and has had exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid as well as at the DIA Center of the Arts in New York. Most of his video installations employ computers and multiple projectors with varying film or video length to overlap dialogue and action resulting in a wide variation of occurrence within a given storyline or situation. This multiplicity of perspective is central to Douglas’s work as he is constantly revisiting, recreating and uncovering implied and universal truths in a specific circumstance. Many of his videos last for several hours and provoke viewers to decide for themselves when they have comprehended the meaning or have become satisfied with a complete story which, as Douglas’ work reminds us, can never be fully complete and continues to evolve in waves of repercussion and new interpretation. After World War I, Heinz Hajek-Halke began his career in the arts as a poster designer. He then took on work as a printer, draftsman, and editor until finally in 1924 he found himself with a camera in his hands. He delved into expressive work such as collage and photomontage and also became avidly interested in the photogram; a photographic image produced without the use of a camera. Photography dictated his work for decades to come, making him one of the only German photographers whose career endured the commencement of experimental photography in the 1920s and continued through its revival in the 1950s and 60s. WW II had him fleeing to Switzerland where he developed his characteristic taste for marine biology and nudes. After the war, he rejoined the experimental photographic community in Germany and became an active member. His work was exhibited in many leading shows of experimental photography, such as Otto Steinert’s “Subjektive Photographie” exhibitions and the 1954 “Photokina” show in Cologne. He published his book on photogram techniques “Lichtgraphic”; light graphics were made without a camera. Instead, each image was created by applying a combination of chemical and mechanical techniques to photographic materials, such as negative film and light-sensitive paper. Clayton Maxwell: Could you please tell us about your surrealist, fantastical series titled Rose, C'est Paris? Many of Soltau’s earliest drawn portraits are of heads either wrapped in hair or threads, or appear to be decomposing into a series of crazed webs invading and literally de-facing the women she depicts. Kathrin Schmidt’s suggestion that this opens up the possibility for Soltau of getting closer to the haptic thread, that is, of inviting touch, extends the parameters of interpretation of the work. In a Deleuzian reading, the haptic, through sensations connected to touch, enables or stimulates an affective response. In her early portraits, hair as an embodied material, reminds us doubly of the body. The body (in the form of hair) wraps, decomposes or becomes web-like. Soltau shares with us her discovery of the beginnings of a tactile visuality of the human form. never seen their children again. But there were also stories of widows who came from well-to-do families and had children that wanted them to remain at