Valerie Phillips: Capturing the Essence of Real Beauty in Everyday Life
Valerie Phillips, a talented photographer that captured the essence of girlhood in the last 20 years, possesses a distinctive approach to capturing the beauty that surrounds us in our daily lives. Through her candid and captivating photographs, she delves deep into the raw and authentic essence of her subjects. Phillips fearlessly challenges societal expectations pertaining to appearance, behavior, and purpose, urging viewers to question the conventional norms that dictate our lives.
In her extensive body of work, Phillips immerses herself in the lives of young women, providing a platform for their stories and showcasing their unwavering determination. She skillfully highlights the individuality and strength of each subject. By documenting their passions, dreams, and aspirations, Phillips celebrates the astonishingly diverse interests and pursuits of young women, breaking free from stereotypes and clichés.
Phillips also finds herself grappling with the intricacies of relationships in the era of the internet. While she relies on technology for her photography process, she passionately emphasizes the significance of face-to-face interactions and upholding traditional connections with people. By skillfully navigating both the physical and digital realms, she uncovers the intriguing dualities that exist within contemporary human connections.
Valerie Phillips' work stands as a testament to her remarkable creativity, intelligence, and her exceptional ability to capture the true essence of her subjects. Through her photographs, she allows us to discover and appreciate the profound beauty concealed within ordinary scenes, while simultaneously challenging societal expectations. As she explores the stories of young women and embarks on her own personal journey, Phillips invites us to reflect upon our own perceptions and connections in the modern world.
Images Scanned From Monika Monster, Future First Woman On Mars, I Can’t Believe A Girl Is Playing Me and Alice In Wonderland and more.
Pissing in the Garden - David Horvitz
pissing in the garden is a photo zine with a poem by Edward Steck. Edition of 150. Printed in LA. About 80 pages. It includes about 50 people (friends and friends of friends) peeing in my garden. (Yes, peeing is good, it adds nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium to your soil and then to your plants.) The photos documents a network of friendships in a setting (the garden). For me it is both a documentation of the person and action (a kind of solitary performance) and the garden itself. The garden as a setting, a site, a landscape. The setting, the background, itself as the parallel subject. It is place for things to happen, for people to gather (also for animals and plants and mushrooms and other life to meet). There is also the intersection, the blurring, the intertwining and connection that happens in this between each person and the soil and plants. I originally imagined this to be a kind of group exhibition where everyone leaves a trace of themselves into the soil that will re-emerge as leaves and stems and flowers.- David Horvitz
The Strip By Tiane Doan na Champassak
Every night in the heart of Patpong, Bangkok’s oldest red-light district, The Strip opens its doors. In January 2016, Tiane Doan na Champassak met one of the managers – an American who was, by chance, a fan of photography – who asked him if he would be interested in making a book on his club. Tiane took the chance.
Since the initial photos were too explicit and risky for the club, Tiane used the scanner as a stylistic device and altered the images, taking The Strip beyond the limits between abstraction and figuration. His photographic experiment rejects immediate perception and builds on more complex visual and psychic structures, creating a dazzling narrative.
With its focus on blending contours and its chromatics that alludes to a kind of electric Fauvism,The Strip has the appeal of a metafictional visual story about an hypothetical infra-red-light district in Bangkok.
Tiane Doan na Champassak (1973) is a French visual artist. His photographic work explores the themes of sexuality and gender identity. The depiction of sexuality is an enduring theme in his practice in which he explores the relation between his own photographic production and appropriated images seen by the filters of anonymity and censorship. The sources are diverse and include the Internet, personal memorabilia and magazine cuttings, all of which are recontextualized in a new light. All his self-published artist books are released under the label Siam’s Guy Books.
In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort, a fable by Richard Avedon. Featuring model Nadja Auermann and a friendly skeleton companion, originally appearing in The New Yorker, November 6, 1995.
