Camera Obscura » Ritratto

Any males, by Didier Illouz

Fabiano Busdraghi — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:57:38 +0000

Didier Illouz works with photography, graphics, digital manipulation and movies.

In his series “Any males” he photographed people from his entourage, and than -thanks to the possibilities offered by digital editing- he mixed their faces with that of an animal of his choice.

The result are hybrid beings, part man, part beasts, which recall the mystical visions of shamanism traditions, the metamorphoses of Lycanthrope, mysterious therianthropy dreams.

Usually over retouched projects end up with images that are clearly false and bad, but in this case the photograph by Didier Illouz are very elegant and well balanced, with a beautiful black and white to sepia tones, a gray-scale reminiscent photos from the pre-exposing to make a gray paper base. A great way to walk around between the visionary imagination of digital photography and traditional one.

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Fade to White, by Charlie Simokaitis

Fabiano Busdraghi — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:30:16 +0000

Charlie Simokaitis is the first photographer who responded to my call to deepen the discourse about photography, writing a long and detailed article about his portfolio Fade to White.

A wonderful series -triggered by his personal situation- of large format camera photographs about blind people and their lives. Narrative photographs with a little bit of irony, but also with great empathy and respect for the portrayed subjects. And above all very touching human situations, people, lives. Thanks Charlie for telling us all those stories behind the pictures, I think this really adds an extra dimension to your beautiful photos.

Following text and photos by Charlie Simokaitis.

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Madness and poetry, the pinhole portraits by gUi mohallem

Fabiano Busdraghi — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:44:01 +0000

© gUi mohallem

“When I was a kid my auntie used to take me to those rituals.
I was in the middle of this circle of candles
and these women kept singing
things I could not understand.
I’m afraid they did something to me.”

gUi mohallem is a Brazilian photographer whose pinhole portraits about madness have caught my attention from the very first moment I saw them.

In addition to his dark, intense and blurred photos, I greatly appreciated the accompanying texts: quotes collected during his discussion with the portrayed people. I have always been fascinated by writing, as well as photography, the extracts gUi mohallem combines with images are as intense and lapidary modern poems, a form of poetry that is collectively created by people telling their truth in front of the camera.

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