David Hendra’s one-pager really seduced me this week. A collection of images taken whilst the London-based photographer was traveling through South Africa, Uganda and Bangladesh. The images on the site have not been arranged by country or locale but by colour, by shape, by suggested narrative and are packed with all three.
To my mind, a career in editorial photography is akin to living the dream: you hang out at home in your pyjamas waiting for a phone call informing you that you’ll be sent halfway around the world to photograph some enormously talented, charismatic character, and be put up in five star hotels and business class all the way. I recognise that more than likely the opposite is true: it’s a skanky mouldy flat, you’re put on the number 55 bus to shoot somebody who lives down the road, and there’s neither a five star hotel nor a plane anywhere in sight. Still, the breadth of brilliant people to photograph is there, and that’s enough to incite envy in even the most satisfied of people.
“C.O.D is what it says on the tin,” says Lee Crichton, editor and creator of Collection of Documentaries – a weighty tome celebrating a gritty adoration of British culture. “The magazine started off as me thinking I wanted to recreate The Face, which obviously was impossible. I starting researching British-inspired magazines and thought there was a gap to create something new and fresh. I then got in touch with Sheryl Garrett of The Face for advice on how to put such a publication together.”
Jake Singer is an artist predominantly interested in architecture and how people interact with built space. Just on the side of this practice, he’s also knocking out some great fashion photography. Describing this work as “just really fun and casual,” and mostly projects he does with friends, Jake’s photographs combine high production values with wit that plays up the “blue steel” tradition so prevalent in collection lookbooks.
Lark Foord photographs details, whether they be the back ends of rusty old bangers, suburban hedgerows or the textures of buildings and street furniture. His project Parts is like a visual record of the glory days of the automobile industry. There are station-wagons, hand-painted hoods depicting beach scenes and love-worn racing numbers, matte gold paint and a general air of the 70s.
We’ve been big fans of photographic duo Baker & Evans since their inaugural collaborations in 2011. There were zines with encouraging quotes surrounded by men dressed in foliage, celebrations of wet-look hair gel and more recently, photographs of Lernert & Sander’s mayonnaise dumbbells. You’d think after that run they’d have to retire, but Baker & Evans just keep pulling great work out of their seemingly bottomless bags.
Dutch artist and illustrator Jordy van den Nieuwendijk is a 24-carat It’s Nice That favourite. We’ve featured his work multiple times (both online and in print), he’s spoken at our events, heck he’s even been for lunch at our studio (he had a baked potato).
We first posted Erin O’Keefe’s work almost exactly a year ago. Since then, the New York-based artist and architect has been producing more optical illusion-based wonders. Erin’s architectural practice, and the inherently formal considerations of spatial perception involved, informs the distorted perspectives of her photography and 3D collage.
Architectural photography can often feel elitist at best and stuffy at worst, so imagine our delight to come across this new book Down the Long Driveway, You’ll See It, by New Zealand-born, Montpellier-based photographer Mary Gaudin.
Day-to-day Francois Visser is the kind of photographer you’ll find with his lens trained on scantily clad, elfin adolescents, such is the nature of fashion photography. But his carefully-composed portraits have a sensitivity that many newcomers lack; a substance-before-style approach that denotes a mature understanding of his medium.
This year’s open submission Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize was awarded to London-based photographer David Titlow for a photograph of his toddler son. The photograph, if you haven’t seen it, is a hazy, Vermeer-esque image of David’s hungover friends on the morning after a party, passing his new son around in the cold light of the Swedish sun. Back on UK soil, David’s work couldn’t be more different. He seems to be something of a darling of the glossies: snapping models and celebs for the likes of Vanity Fair, Esquire, Nylon and Marie Claire. His impulsive, confident shots are a far cry from his tender, voyeuristic personal work – which is why we wanted to ask him a few questions about what he does. Here he is…
The annually ubiquitous words “resort collection” evoke whiffs of Campari and orange, sunset-lit terraces in The Hamptons, a suitcase of freshly pressed, pastel daywear. That’s why we were rather surprised when New York Magazine’s fashion branch The Cut decided to commission Asger Carlsen to help show off 2015’s sartorial offerings. Asger is a Danish artist living and working in New York, and is the go-to man for distorted, nightmare-like monochromatic images that have the power to send bolts of nerves fleetingly through your teeth.
I don’t mean to show off, but I’ve met quite a few Americans, and I often ask them about the creative scene in the USA. More specifically I’m interested in whether it’s possible to elucidate any recurring themes or general characteristics in such a huge, diverse country. Most of them, bluntly but politely, say that no, no it’s not. What a ridiculous question. Get out my car. So to study American creativity is actually to study its individual outposts, and that’s where Wesley Verhoeve’s One Of Many project comes in.
Cool Hunting used to be a place of current art and design, expensive watches, exclusive booze bottles, leather mountaineering accessories and cars you will never be able to afford. Nowadays it’s a place of exotic content nestled snugly in a brand new redesign that’s pretty ahead of the game. Recently it’s been championing the work of an American photographer called Arthur Drooker, largely focusing on his series entitled Conventional Wisdom. Arthur is something of a curiosity-lover, and his wild, weird series are the visual result of him being unable to resist the pull of “Bronies,” ventriloquists, clowns, re-enactors and taxidermists.
