Black Sheep Pen and Nick Earls

The wonderful Black Sheep Pen has a very good interview up with Nick Earls.

Nick is an award winning author from Australia, writing novels, short stories and recently plays.

He deals in his stories with life and its changes as a young man in Australian society.

Please enjoy his great interview on Black Sheep Pen

Leafless Diaries - The 50/50 Project

Sandra Dyas has been chosen to be Iowa's photographer for the new 50/50 Project by Leafless Diaries.

Congratulations Sandra!!!

Leafless Diaries selected one single photographer from every state to create the visual representation of the state they live in.

Each of the 50 chosen photographers are selected on a wide range of criteria including style, experience and background.

Read more about the project and Leafless Diaries here.

Quinnford & Scout

Quinnford and Scout are a couple who met in 2008 in Paris. Since then, they have been documenting their relationship. The photos capture the excitement of being with one another and show with so much detail, intimacy and love how they grow together and how their relationship develops over the time.

What they have created and keep creating is a wonderful portrait of life together.

Please visit their website with much more work to see

They also run a Blog and have a Flickr page.

Both are from various places in Ireland and are currently located in Manchester, England

The photos below are all from their wonderful and captivating project.

James Friedman on Ragazine

James Friedman's series Interior Design is featured on Ragazine, The On-Line Magazine of Art, Information & Entertainment.

James Friedman, one of America's great photographers is best known for his documentary work. In this wonderful abstract, minimalist, colorful and mystic series, he created a totally new field in his outstanding body of work.

Please visit Ragazine and dive into the world of Interior Design by James Friedman.

© copyright all images James Friedman

Two Way Lens and Sandra Dyas

Two Way Lens proudly presents Sandra Dyas

I am very happy and excited that I can add another wonderful photographer to my project. This month's photographer is Sandra Dyas. Sandra is a photographer and teacher based in Iowa City, Iowa. Her work is widely exhibited and published and she was selected to be the photographer for Iowa for The 50 States Project.

Please visit Sandra's website for more work to see, and of course, Sandra's blog is worth a visit too.

But now it's time to read Sandra's very insightful interview for Two Way Lens.

Katie in Her Wedding Dress, Iowa City, Iowa, from the series Holding On; Portraits of People I Know

Susan with the Red Tomato, near Andrew, Iowa, from the series Holding On; Portraits of People I Know

The Poodle in Berlin, from the series Heaven & Earth

Boy with Beads, Mardi Gras, Lafayette, Louisiana, from the series The Lost Nation Photographs

James and the Pronghorn, Iowa City, Iowa, from the series The Lost Nation Photographs

Steve Roling, Rolly World, near Bellevue, Iowa, from The 50 States Project

Sophie's Birthday, from the series Heaven & Earth

Pieta Brown, Coralville, Iowa, from the series Down to the River; Portraits of Iowa Musicians

Chloe Swimming, Iowa City, Iowa, from the series Holding On; Portraits of People I Know

Nya with Long Braids, Iowa City, Iowa

© copyright all images Sandra Dyas

Greater Lakes

My newest series Greater Lakes is now online on my website. I am very happy with this body of work from my second home Australia.


Here is the artist statement for Greater Lakes:

There is an area in Australia called the Great Lakes, on lands traditionally owned by the Worimi and Biripi
nations and presently centred around the twin townships of Forster and Tuncurry. When I went there for the first time in 2004, I fell in love with it, it is my second home, the place where my parents-in-law live.
Today it is a paradise for people who are retired and want to live the best life they can imagine. Most of the year it is a very quiet, peaceful little place, situated in nature's paradise, with dream like white sandy beaches and the big salt water lakes, home of many wildlife animals, beautiful colorful birds and native australian plants. The biggest decision is walking near the lake or walking near the beach. The retired people live their peaceful life and not much in the way of nightlife exists in this part of world.
Then there is the other part of year, during the summer, when it is a popular place for people from Sydney and other parts of Australia to spend their holidays. Every available space is filled with young people with their noise and energy, they take over and you are suddenly in a different world. As soon as the holidays are over, the area is again quiet and peaceful.
This is a portrait of the area I love and enjoy whenever I am there.

Please check out Greater Lakes here









© copyright all images Michael Werner

E.F. Kitchen - Suburban Knights

One of powerHouse Books' new releases is E.F. Kitchen's photo book

Suburban Knights: A Return to the Middle Ages.

There is a group called The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). The members of this group are devoted to re-creating the arts and activities of the Middle Age in the present such as large scale mock wars, in which they wear period armor and engage in physically rigorous combat. They meet by the thousands on vast fields, wearing full body armor and forcefully striking one another with rattan swords. SCA has more than 30.000 members worldwide and over 16 "Kingdoms" in the United States alone.

From 2003 to 2005 E.F. Kitchen photographed and interviewed the SCA fighters on their battle fields. Using a modern camera wouldn't be suitable for this project. Instead she used a large format 8" x 10" camera with antique lenses with some defects. She made custom platinum prints from the negatives to achieve this unique and antique look. When I saw the photographs in this book for the first time, I thought they were somehow old etchings or drawings from ages long, long gone. I guess this is how photographs would have looked like in the Middle Age, if photography had existed.

This is a fascinating series of portraits of people who live otherwise ordinary lives as, for instance, real estate analysts, housewives, restaurant managers, many are retired and so on. When they are in their armor they become their alter egos, like Sgt. Duncan the Monster, Count Darius Jaxarticus or Honorable Lady Bridget Lucia MacKenzie.

There is also a video preview of Suburban Knights available here

© copyright all images E.F. Kitchen, from the book Suburban Knights

Lee Gainer

Lee Gainer is a photo based artist living in the Metro DC Area.

His work explores culturally and media supported perceptions.

He uses found imagery, analyzes social rules, hidden messages, the psychology behind the ides and how they may alter our behavior.

He created a fascinating body of work which can bee seen on his website.

I picked two of his series, one is Two Months Salary and the other Sleeping Women.

Excerpts from his statements to the series are included below.

Lee also runs a well known blog called Peek.

Please make sure to visit both, his blog and his website.

All images below are from the series Two Months Salary

If you visit WeddingChannel.com, you will find a ring budget tool that determines what you should spend. It divides your annual salary by 6 to come up with the "standard" two month guideline. Using this equation, along with the most recent average salary data gathered from the US Dept. of Labor and Payscale.com, I created a list of average salaries for a range of occupations. Images of rings were allocated to each occupation by price. There are 20 separate prints in this piece, each representing a specific occupation with 9 rings that, according to the jewelry industry, are the standard for that particular occupation’s salary.

All images below are from the series "Sleepy Women"

Sleepy Women is a collection of images of sleeping women found in various advertisements for pillows. Each model's image was isolated from the ad, enlarged, printed, and mounted on archival foam core and lined with white felt.

I was intrigued by the images of these women who were photographed in full make up while pretending to sleep. There's an old saying that all women should get their beauty rest. Young girls are told this early on, at least they were in previous generations, underscoring that their looks and not their talent or work ethic is their most important asset. So much so that they should take extra care to maintain and better their appearance for the sake of their own success. According to various beauty websites, it is actually a bad habit to sleep while wearing makeup. Cosmetics can clog pores and cause blemishes, eliminating any gains from resting. But yet these women lay dreaming, lovely and not a hair out of place.

© copyright all images Lee Gainer