Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Ahmed R. Abou Naja Managing & Creative Director Marwa R. Abou Naja Editor Nahla Samaha Contributors Blaise Arnold Jacqueline Roberts Richard Nicholson Jane Long Nick Brandt Doug Bloodworth Jetty van Wezel Published by
UNEXPLORED PUBLISHING United Arab Emirates P. O. Box 5337 Garhoud, Dubai Tel: +971 4 283 3254 Lebanon P. O. Box 14-5184 Mazraa, Beirut Tel: +961 1 654 910 Editorial Inquiries: editorial@unexploredpublishing.com
Rio Cinema, Dalston, London Š Cover Photograph Courtesy of Richard Nicholson
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All text and layouts remain the copyright of Unexplored Publishing. Soura Magazine cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material or transparencies. Soura Magazine is fully independent and its views are not those of any company mentioned herein. All copyrights and trademarks are recognized and all images are used for the purpose of criticism and review only. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without a written permission of the publisher. Soura Magazine can accept no responsibility for inaccuracies or complaints arising from advertisements featured within the publication.
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This issue’s photographers tap into our love of drama. The stylised cinematic work of Blaise Arnold in his series Stories depicts iconic characters in their historically accurate cinematic environment, while Doug Bloodworth takes us into a hyperrealism Americana with his photorealism painting style, often mistaken for actual photographs. Jacqueline Roberts offers us hauntingly beautiful intimate portraits that both mesmerize and touch upon our inner child. Also offering a haunting, ethereal setting is Jane Long, who has created high drama in an eerie world of her making. Through the vignettes she has created Long features taxidermy moths and butterflies that she made herself. There is more drama than one can possibly fit into one single issue, and with drama comes feeling, bursts of emotion in reaction to viewing the work of these phenomenal photographers. In his sobering and provocative work, Nick Brandt puts us face-to-face with the extinction of our natural world by placing large scale photographs of endangered wild animals in the man-made ruins of their natural habitat; urban constructs and urban wastelands that were once home to these wild animals. Photographer Richard Nicholson captures the raw and rough world of cinema projectionist rooms & the projectionists that operate them in an homage to a dying art form, his sombre depictions offer a dignified look at the unglamorous rooms out of which pour glamour, imagination, and suspension of disbelief. While Jetty Van Vezzel gives us a unique perspective of world events by cleverly selecting news headlines and news images and placing them on geometrical shirts; shedding a whole new dramatic light on them. There is so much more in this issue to feast your eyes upon, so much talent, so many worlds born of fanciful imaginations, and a lot of drama! Drama! Drama! Soura Magazine Team
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CONTENT | ISSUE 41 06 Blaise Arnold Historical Drama 16 Jacqueline Roberts Tinged with Emotion 26 Richard Nicholson Dark Room Drama 38 Jane Long The Evolution of a Photographer 48 Nick Brandt A Vanishing Natural World 58 Doug Bloodworth Hyper-Real Americana 70 Jetty van Wezel Re-Constructing News Headlines
2016 | Volume 1  5
Photography | Blaise Arnold
Blaise Arnold Historical Drama
Blaise Arnold graduated from the school of graphic arts at Estienne in Paris in 1986. Since 1991, Arnold has been working as an advertising photographer for several multinational advertising agencies like Publicis, Young & Rubicam, Euro RSCG, Leo Burnett, and more. In 2003, Arnold completed his first personal photography project; a series titled Red Light.
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The series depicts iconic characters in their architecturally and historically accurate natural surroundings.
He has been working on the series Stories since 2010. The series depicts iconic characters in their architecturally and historically accurate natural surroundings with the added flair of cinematic drama. Arnold has participated in several art fairs and exhibitions including the Art Expo in NYC in 2010, and most recently held a solo show at the Batofar Gallery in Paris in 2015. André Ménard
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2016 | Volume 1  7
Photography | Blaise Arnold
Le Clown Youpi
François Lambert
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Ange Venturini
Abel Carbone
2016 | Volume 1  9
Photography | Blaise Arnold
Edouard Chautemps
Sylvie Garnier
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Henri Trémeau
Maître Guilbaud and Blanche Turpin
2016 | Volume 1 11
Photography | Blaise Arnold
Raymond Dalban
Robert Copeaux
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Tony Gambino
Yvon Le Tamec
2016 | Volume 1  13
Photography | Blaise Arnold
Mireille Romance
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Stories To prepare for my Stories, I research architectural, environmental and lifestyle contexts to make my photos as realistic as possible. I photograph iconic characters from a specific period, serving a function in a specific environment.
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This is my way of keeping memories from my childhood, my way of stretching time.
This is my way of keeping memories from my childhood, my way of stretching time; looking back and slowing down life and of course, leaving a contemporary record of our history. I am, you might say, an anthropologist of photography. © All images courtesy of Blaise Arnold www.BlaiseArnold.net
Arlette Ménard
2016 | Volume 1 15
Photography | Jacqueline Roberts
Jacqueline Roberts Tinged with Emotion
Born in Paris in 1969, Spanish photographer Jacqueline Roberts graduated in Political Sciences and worked for international organisations before turning to photography. Roberts’s work presents a collection of intimate portraits, a soulful look at childhood sincere and tinged with emotion. She works primarily using obsolete photographic and printing techniques such as wet plate collodion, making albumen prints, cyanotypes or bromoils. Reviving the craft associated with photography constitutes an essential part of her process, from mixing her own chemistry, cutting her glass plates to working around chemical flaws.
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Roberts’s work presents a collection of intimate portraits, a soulful look at childhood sincere and tinged with emotion.
Her award-winning portraits have featured in publications such as New York Magazine, the Royal Photographic Society Journal, Drome Magazine or China’s Photographers Companion among others. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She has published three books and she is currently working on her fourth monograph, Nebula, with Italian art publisher DAMIANI, that will be available in autumn. 16 Soura Issue 41
2016 | Volume 1  17
Photography | Jacqueline Roberts
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2016 | Volume 1  19
Photography | Jacqueline Roberts
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2016 | Volume 1  21
Photography | Jacqueline Roberts
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2016 | Volume 1  23
Photography | Jacqueline Roberts
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Greatness of Inner Nebula are portraits that I make on glass and metal plates. I use an old photographic technique called wet plate collodion. This process was the primary photographic method from the early 1850s until the late 1880s. It was introduced in 1851 by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer and consists of coating a plate with collodion that is sensitised in silver nitrate. You then expose the plate, still wet, develop it and fix it. It is crucial to go through the whole process while the plate is still wet, as once the collodion film has dried it will not react to the solutions. The result is a negative image on a glass plate that, when backed with a dark background, forms what we call an Ambrotype, derived from the Greek word for ‘immortal’. Alternatively, on a black lacquered metal plate, the image appears directly as a positive. Collodion’s unique aesthetic produces timeless and ethereal images. Each plate is unique.
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We are losing the emotional connection with photographs. Most of the images that we take have become meaningless and disposable. I want the image to be precious again. But, for me, making wet plates goes beyond the photographic process itself. It is a sort of inner journey. A state of mind. In today’s digital world we are swamped with images. If we look back, photographs used to be some of our most prized possessions, treasures that we would save from a house on fire. We are losing the emotional connection with photographs. Most of the images that we take have become meaningless and disposable. I want the image to be precious again. I look for images that are unique, that hold value. Images to remember and preserve. To this end, I believe that engaging with the sitter and capturing emotion in a portrait is essential to how I approach photography. Other aspects, such as a sense of aesthetics, composition, contingent metaphors, pictorial references or intimacy, are fundamental too if I want to transcend the portrait and look for the “greatness of inner”, to borrow Julia Margaret Cameron’s words. All these are features that I pursue in my work.
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Nebula , Latin for mist, reflects on the turmoil of growing up with all its relational, psychological and emotional changes. Another essential aspect in my work is to pause and take the time to create an image. My portraits are about that, time. Time passed. Time elapsed. Time suspended. Time ahead or behind us. The portraits from the series Nebula required long exposures, which eased the sitters into detaching themselves from their immediate surrounds, as if suspended in time and in space. The individuals in these portraits are neither children, nor adolescents. I wanted their portraits to emerge from that state of limbo to evoke the transitional stage that they are going through. Nebula, Latin for mist, reflects on the turmoil of growing up with all its relational, psychological and emotional changes. © All images courtesy of Jacqueline Roberts Roberts’s new monograph Nebula is available on www.JacquelineRoberts.com 2016 | Volume 1 25
Photography | Richard Nicholson
Embarking on a PhD program in continental philosophy he had a sudden change of heart about the academic lifestyle, and dropped out to take up a place at film school. After spending a year making shorts on 16mm film, he moved to London and found work on film sets as a stills photographer.
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After spending a year making shorts on 16mm film, he moved to London and found work on film sets as a stills photographer.
It was then that he realized that he was more intrigued by the still image than the moving image, and decided to dedicate his life to photography. Initially he worked as an editorial photographer, shooting portraits for a wide range of lifestyle and design magazines like i-D, Domus, Vogue, Icon, Financial Times, and Creative Review. Later he devoted more energy to working on long term personal projects.
Richard Nicholson Dark Room Drama
Richard Nicholson is a photographic artist based in Bethnal Green, London. His practice is concerned with the transition from analogue to digital technologies. He believes that our contemporary digital environment has left us feeling disconnected from the material world. His work seeks to remind us of a time when we had a more engaged relationship with the tangible objects that surround us.
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… his father gave him a Kodak Instamatic camera and built a home darkroom to process and print the exposed films. Nicholson was introduced to photography as a ten year old, when his father gave him a Kodak Instamatic camera and built a home darkroom to process and print the exposed films. Nicholson studied philosophy and literature at York University (BA) and Warwick University (MA). He won a distinction for his MA dissertation which explored the roles of hashish and wine in the poetry of Baudelaire.’
In 2006 Nicholson began work on the project, Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light, which documented the demise of the professional photographic darkroom. Initially photographing darkrooms in his native London, he later travelled the world to photograph darkrooms in Tokyo, New York, Paris and Berlin. This work was well-received and has been widely published and exhibited.
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In 2006 Nicholson began work on the project, Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light, which documented the demise of the professional photographic darkroom.
In 2011 it caught the eye of the University of Warwick’s Professor Charlotte Brunsdon, who was heading up a research group called the Projection Project, that investigated the history of film projection in British cinemas. She invited Nicholson to join the project and the series The Projectionists (2012-16) is a result of their collaboration. In 2013, Nicholson returned to university to study for an MA in Photography at the London College of Communication. His graduation work has been selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016. Nicholson is represented by Riflemaker Gallery, London, who are showing his work at Photo London 2016. Ewan Dunford, Watershed, Bristol.
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2016 | Volume 1  27
Photography | Richard Nicholson
Alexa Raisbeck and Peter Bell, NFT1, BFI Southbank, London.
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Allan Foster, Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds.
2016 | Volume 1  29
Photography | Richard Nicholson
Paul Edmunds, Birmingham.
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Peter Bell and Alexa Raisbeck, NFT1, BFI Southbank, London.
2016 | Volume 1  31
Photography | Richard Nicholson
David Powell, ICA, London.
Ray Reed, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle.
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James Anderson, Duke of York’s, Brighton.
Sam Bishop, The Electric, Birmingham.
2016 | Volume 1 33
Photography | Richard Nicholson
Peter Howden, Rio Cinema, Dalston, London.
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Umit Mesut, Umit and Son, London.
2016 | Volume 1  35
Photography | Richard Nicholson
Amanda Ireland, Prince Charles Cinema, London.
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A Melancholy Story The Projectionists is a study of the last days of film projection in British cinemas. Between 2010 and 2012, the vast majority of cinemas switched over from film to digital projection systems. Movies were no longer distributed in cans of celluloid film, but instead arrived on encrypted hard drives or, more recently, across proprietary satellite links.
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This series documents the cinemas that are holding out against this digital onslaught and who are proud of their ability to show films in the way that they were intended.
As beautifully intricate 35mm film projectors were unceremoniously scrapped to make way for blackbox digital projectors, 90% of film projectionists were made redundant. This series documents the cinemas that are holding out against this digital onslaught and who are proud of their ability to show films in the way that they were intended. My previous work about the demise of the photographic darkroom was shot on large format film, and I initially planned to shoot the same way for this project. But when I first visited a film projection box, and discovered how dark and cramped it was, I started to think of alternative approaches. Although it might seem like a travesty, I ended up shooting this project with a digital Nikon D800. Digital requires much less light than 4”x5” film, and this enabled me to use small battery-powered lights that could easily be concealed behind objects within the photograph. I like my images to have sharp focus from front to back, and in these cramped spaces it would have been impossible to achieve if I had shot on film.
I think film projection attracts unusual personality types. You have got to be a bit of a loner, as the working hours rule out any normal sort of social life. Photography attracts similar people, so I felt quite at home hanging out in these workspaces. In my darkroom project, I photographed the enlargers headon with a flat wash of light, but this approach didn’t work with the projection rooms. I needed to create a more atmospheric lighting set-up to reflect the true ambience of the working projection room (projectionists work in near darkness, in order to stop light spilling into the auditorium).
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I began by photographing the projection rooms without the projectionists, but I realized I needed their presence to give a sense of the scale and function of the machinery.
I began by photographing the projection rooms without the projectionists, but I realized I needed their presence to give a sense of the scale and function of the machinery. I knew from the outset that these images would end up as large-scale exhibition prints, so this allowed me to compose my pictures with the projectionist very small in frame. I wanted to avoid the sort of ‘hero’ shot you would see in a magazine feature (projectionist standing proudly by his projector, meeting the gaze of the camera). So the projectionists are always absorbed in something, seemingly unaware of the camera. This is a melancholy story about the demise of a complex craft, and I wanted the atmosphere of the pictures to reflect this. © All images courtesy of Richard Nicholson www.RichardNicholson.com
2016 | Volume 1 37
Photography | Jane Long
Jane Long
The Evolution of a Photographer Photographer and digital artist Jane Long was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1970. Currently based in Brisbane, Australia, she combines photography and photo manipulation to create slightly surreal images that straddle the line between reality and fantasy.
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Her work as a designer influences her style and enhances her compositions, with strong use of negative space, particularly in her portraiture work.
Long has spent most of her career as a graphic designer, entering the industry over 20 years ago and establishing her own studio in 1996. Her work as a designer influences her style and enhances her compositions, with strong use of negative space, particularly in her portraiture work. Completely self-taught, she has worked with Photoshop since 1994, both commercially and on her personal projects.
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Long has delved wholeheartedly into photography, concentrating on conceptual portraiture. However digital art remains a passion and forms an integral part of her work. Long’s entry to digital art was through working with stock images from sites like DeviantArt, where she spent a lot of time advancing her skills. Eventually she came to want more control over the stock images she was using, both from a creative and copyright point of view, and developed an interest in photography. Initially working with friends and family, she used an old INSTAMATIC or borrowed equipment for several years until her first DSLR purchase a little over three years ago. Since then, Long has delved wholeheartedly into photography, concentrating on conceptual portraiture. However digital art remains a passion and forms an integral part of her work.
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2016 | Volume 1  39
Photography | Jane Long
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2016 | Volume 1  41
Photography | Jane Long
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2016 | Volume 1  43
Photography | Jane Long
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2016 | Volume 1  45
Photography | Jane Long
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Of Moths and Music I was approached by Decca Records around September last year about creating some images for Norwegian singer Aurora’s debut album. I was thrilled to be approached and was already familiar with some of her songs (which I love!) so I was more than happy to jump on board.
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The music from Aurora’s album is quite haunting, so I wanted the images to have a mix of innocence and darkness to match. Initially, we set up a conference call between Aurora in Norway, Chris (our contact at Decca) in London and myself in Brisbane to discuss ideas. Aurora directed me to her Instagram account for some ideas on the type of images she likes. She’s quite obsessed with moths so we knew straight away that they would need to be featured heavily throughout the images. In the beginning I was contracted to do the album cover and three single covers but a decision was made along the way to do a 36-page booklet, so we ended up with almost twenty images in total. The music from Aurora’s album is quite haunting, so I wanted the images to have a mix of innocence and darkness to match. I also had a crash-course in lepidoptera, ordering moths online and learning how to taxidermy them. I have quite a collection now and can tell the difference between a moth and a butterfly! These were all shot in a variety of angles and light setups. To explain how it worked, I set up the shots I wanted with a model here in Brisbane and then sent copies and lighting and posing instructions to Bent René Synnevåg so he could shoot Aurora in Norway. Aurora’s logo is of a hand-drawn tree, so I created a 3D tree in Photoshop to mimic its shape. This tree was then used in The Swing, Windy Tree and Moth Tree (the cover for the Conqueror single). Around this time the brief was expanded and I started creating the series of vignettes. I used objects around my home and called in favours from a friend for props, adding in my little stuffed moths along the way.
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I started creating the series of vignettes. I used objects around my home and called in favours from a friend for props, adding in my little stuffed moths along the way. The composites were put together and textures and toning was added. The images then went back to Decca and Aurora for approval. At Aurora’s request most of the images were made a little darker. It’s always a bit of give and take when working with a commercial client. Due to my design background, I also did the entire layout for the vinyl, CD tray and two different booklets. © Universal Music. Original images of Aurora shot by Bent René Synnevåg. All other images and digital art by Jane Long. www.JaneLong.com.au
2016 | Volume 1 47
Photography | Nick Brandt
© Image courtesy of Joshua Yeh
Nick Brandt
A Vanishing Natural World Nick Brandt’s latest book, Inherit The Dust (2016), records the impact of man in places where animals used to roam, but no longer do. His work documents the ongoing disappearance of the animal and natural world of East Africa through his photographic body of work.
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His work documents the ongoing disappearance of the animal and natural world of East Africa.
From 2001 to 2012, Brandt worked on three photographic essays, charting this disappearing world. The books formed the trilogy, On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, Across The Ravaged Land. Brandt is cofounder of Big Life Foundation, a non-profit fighting to protect the animals of a 2 million acre ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania.
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Brandt is co-founder of Big Life Foundation, a non-profit fighting to protect the animals of a 2 million acre ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania.
Brandt has had solo gallery and museum shows around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Paris and Los Angeles. Born and raised in England, he now lives in the southern Californian mountains. Alleyway with chimpanzee
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2016 | Volume 1  49
Photography | Nick Brandt
Road to factory with zebra
Quarry with giraffe
Wasteland with lion
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Road with elephant
Wasteland with rhinos
Road junction with qumquat & family
2016 | Volume 1  51
Photography | Nick Brandt
Underpass with elephants
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2016 | Volume 1  53
Photography | Nick Brandt
Wasteland with cheetahs & children
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2016 | Volume 1  55
Book | Nick Brandt
Inherit the Dust I grew up in England, home of the elk, lynx and brown bear, of the wolf and wolverine and cave lion, of the woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. Of course, this was before my time. For each of us, wherever we live on the planet, animals such as these walked in the very place where we are sitting now. But most of these animals are long gone. Meanwhile in parts of present-day Africa - albeit fewer parts by the day sometimes even more extraordinary animals do still roam.
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Keep going at this pace, and the unique mega-fauna of Africa will be rapidly gone the way of the mega-fauna of America and Europe.
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East Africa. Where you can still cast your gaze across the plains, and see multiple species: elephants, giraffes, zebras, buffaloes, gazelles, impalas, hippos, lions, jackals, cheetahs, and so on. But the destruction of these animals, of these African places, is not happening in the past where we grew up, but in our own immediate present. Keep going at this pace, and the unique mega-fauna of Africa will be rapidly gone the way of the mega-fauna of America and Europe, which was wiped out by far fewer men many centuries ago. This was the genesis for this new body of work, Inherit The Dust. Genesis. We are living through the antithesis of genesis right now. All those billions of years to reach a place of such wondrous diversity, and then in just a few shockingly short years, an infinitesimal pinprick of time, to annihilate that.
And East Africa is a microcosm of that. The majority of us still think that the destruction in Africa is to do with poaching, feeding the insatiable demand for animal parts from the Far East. Actually, it’s much more complex and monumental than that. Mainly, it’s about all of us. The terrifying number of us, and the impact of the very finite amount of space and resources for so many humans.
Meanwhile, the economic value of these animals is astonishing. When an elephant is killed by poachers, the average sum earned by poachers and traders will be around $20,000, with obviously none of it seen by the community. But it has been calculated that over the course of its lifetime, a single elephant will contribute more than $1.6 million to the country’s tourism economy.
I conceived this project in early 2014 - to photograph life-size panels of animals in locations where they used to roam but, as a result of human impact on the environment, no longer do.
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I wanted the people within the photographs to be oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals featured in them, who effectively are now no more than ghosts in the landscape. I wanted some of the animals in the panels to appear to be looking out at these destroyed landscapes with sadness, as if lamenting the loss of the world they once inhabited.
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I wanted the people within the photographs to be oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals featured in them.
But I had to ask myself, am I just grieving for the loss of this world because as a privileged white guy from the West, I’ll never again be able to see these animals in the wild?
And as the continent-wide destruction continues, those ecosystems that do remain will become even more precious and highly valued.
So Africa is sitting on a gold (elephant) mine. And as the continent-wide destruction continues, those ecosystems that do remain will become even more precious and highly valued. We have a moral and humane imperative to protect the earth and its creatures. But from an admittedly un-poetic but pragmatic point of view, there is also enormous economic benefit. Once upon a time, we had animals such as these where we lived. We blew it, wiped them out, but we still have a chance to protect and preserve the places and those animals where they still live. If we can, corny though it sounds, then the animals, the local communities, us, the planet - we all win. © All images courtesy of Nick Brandt & Atlas Gallery, London www.NickBrandt.com
Most African people would say that our Western societies trampled all over our own natural world centuries ago in the interests of economic expansion, and that in Africa, they never got much of a chance to develop economically until now. And so now it is their turn to economically grow. Why should they be deprived of the comfortable, material lives that we have in the West?
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Most African people would say that our Western societies trampled all over our own natural world centuries ago in the interests of economic expansion.
In some regards, it’s a reasonable argument. But at what cost? Protection of the environment and economic benefit do not have to be mutually exclusive. In parts of the world such as this - poor but teeming with natural wonders - ecotourism is often the only truly significant source of long-term economic benefit. The semi-arid land can only support so much herding or farming. Take away the animals, and there’s almost nothing left of economic value.
Factory with Rhino
Factory with chimpanzee
2016 | Volume 1 57
Art | Doug Bloodworth
Doug Bloodworth Hyper-Real Americana
Photorealist artist Doug Bloodworth was inspired by the beyond-life-like sculptures of Duane Hanson—most notably, a Security Guard on display at New York’s Van De Weghe Gallery. Thousands of people, including Bloodworth himself, went up to him and asked him where the restrooms were.
By the same token, Bloodworth enjoys overhearing visitors to his shows saying that they, “love the photos.” When corrected, told that these are oil paintings, their disbelief and confusion often leads them to stare at the paintings for a very long time. Bloodworth has exhibited in many galleries all over the world, from Zurich, to Key West, to South Beach, to Disney World. Bloodworth delights in depicting such beloved and familiar touchstones of Americana as Keebler fudge stripe cookies, M&Ms candies, Coke bottles, Monopoly games, Batman comics, and The New York Times crossword—in mid-attempt—all blown up to giant 4-foot-by-5-foot size. The hyper-real depictions of the pop culture flotsam and jetsam of our lives is a major part of the artist’s appeal.
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2016 | Volume 1  59
Art | Doug Bloodworth
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2016 | Volume 1  61
Art | Doug Bloodworth
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2016 | Volume 1  63
Art | Doug Bloodworth
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2016 | Volume 1  65
Art | Doug Bloodworth
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Photorealism Wonder One question I hear from people that see a photorealism painting is, “What is the point? Why not just blow up a photo?” And I think to myself, “If I could just explain my process they would clearly understand the difference.” In this explanation I can only speak for my painting process and me, as I’m sure every artist approaches his or her painting differently.
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My wife Karen and I have fun setting up the still life compositions and lighting them as dramatically as possible. We usually take 50 to 100 photos. My wife Karen and I have fun setting up the still life compositions and lighting them as dramatically as possible. We usually take 50 to 100 photos, we move things around, adjust them, readjust them, tinker with the lighting, and so on. In every case, one particular photo stands out from all the rest and says, “Hey! it’s me! Paint me!” Using that photo to make my initial drawing, the painting process begins. At this point I look back at some of the other photos and use parts and pieces from them in areas where the lighting might enhance a particular object. I take all the information that I get from the photograph and process it through my brain and I enhance things that I believe improve, or I completely leave out things that I believe take away from the final painting. I do this in hopes that my painting will be a representation of and not an exact duplicate of the photo. Even though I realize that the final painting looks to most viewers like a photo, which I am fine with because I really love this process from beginning to end. My main objective in life was to be a fine artist. I approach my work very seriously.
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Even though I realize that the final painting looks to most viewers like a photo, which I am fine with because I really love this process from beginning to end. Even though the ideas are whimsical, when it comes down to the technical part of producing these things, I am very serious and I take my art very seriously. © All images courtesy of Doug Bloodworth www.Photorealism.com
2016 | Volume 1 67
Art | Jetty van Wezel
Jetty van Wezel
Re-Constructing News Headlines Born in 1963, Jetty van Wezel is a Dutch multidisciplinary designer. After working for 15 years in the fashion industry she moved towards drawing and illustration and is recently making more free artistic work. Image and text are often united in her work. She draws, designs and develops concepts together with various companies. As a teacher of Design, Concept and Illustration she is connected to MAFAD (Maastricht Academy of Fine Art and Design) and she gives lectures and master classes all-over the world.
Hotdog
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Her on-going project Newshirt sees the front pages of newspapers transformed into crisp, paper shirts, drawing attention to certain headlines or images.
Van Wezel is carefully constructing crisp t-shirts out of world news headlines. They are not intended to be worn. But Van Wezel’s work speaks volumes about consumerism and the pace of Fashion. Her on-going project Newshirt sees the front pages of newspapers transformed into crisp, paper shirts, drawing attention to certain headlines or images by folding the newspapers in a particular way.
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A hasty thing like flipping through the paper is transformed into an urgent moment of concentration.
The Newshirt art project is a statement against disposable fashion and snack-culture nowadays. Slow, unique and attentive instead of fast and multiplying. A worthless thing like yesterdays paper is given a new life. A hasty thing like flipping through the paper is transformed into an urgent moment of concentration. The viewer is challenged to see the beauty of common things and to reinterpret everyday images. 68 Soura Issue 41
A Lot of Cars
Tiny
2016 | Volume 1  69
Art | Jetty van Wezel
Africa
Students
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Golden Shelter
Tibetan Houses
12345
Rowers
Landscape
Sail
2016 | Volume 1  71
Sailor Girl
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Sustainable Design In general you could say I’m an image-maker, I like to create awareness with my work. We live in interesting times. The world is in transition, a lot is happening now. I like to point that out in my Newshirt series. I fold the interesting parts from newspapers forcing people to look at it in another way. It’s about highlighting the important news items and also showing the beauty of yesterday’s trash. Working with useless material like old newspapers is an example of sustainable design, slow fashion and storytelling.
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Working with useless material like old newspapers is an example of sustainable design, slow fashion and storytelling.
My aim is to produce aesthetically pleasing yet intellectually stimulating work, implementing a beautiful balance of colour, line and composition through the striking imagery featured. It started as design ideas for fashionable shirts or print design. By folding you get a total new image. Some pictures even lead to little variations in the form of the shirt. For example: A Symmetric is sublime, it’s this picture of a man wearing a traditional piece of fabric wrapped around him with one bare shoulder. I choose to give the folded shirt one sleeve, same as his outfit. I love the way the line is continuing in the sleeve. And look how beautiful the lines of the pattern correspond to the lines of the architecture. Makes me happy to create things like that.
Mint Green Arabic
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… sometimes the picture becomes an abstract image by the way of zooming in and framing it, open to other associations. That’s really interesting to me.
The used pictures and headlines are a timeframe from the Zeitgeist nowadays. From the sport highlights to the refugee crises, it’s all passing by. Some pictures have such a big influence on society that they can be marked as iconic turning-point images. But sometimes the picture becomes an abstract image by the way of zooming in and framing it, open to other associations. That’s really interesting to me. It is an image with many layers. And the beauty of blurred pictures fascinate me, especially with the big raster as used in newspapers, it refers to paintings of Gerhard Richter.
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That’s why I choose to work with papers from all over the world, from France, USA, China, and Saudi Arabia etc. They all have their differences, yet it shows no borders. I don’t like to use magazine paper, too sharp and defined. Besides that, the typography of the characters gives it a strong image. That’s why I choose to work with papers from all over the world, from France, USA, China, and Saudi Arabia etc. They all have their differences, yet it shows no borders. Images that people all over the world can relate to. And it is so fascinating to see how the media are manipulating the readers. News in the Middle East is totally different than it is in the US.
A Symmetric
© All images courtesy of Jetty van Wezel www.JettyvanWezel.tumblr.com Instagram @JettyvanWezel_conceptdesign
2016 | Volume 1 73
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