2014 is at home!!

®Felipe Russo

Fifa decided the host for 2014 World Cup will be Brasil. Is going to be hard holding us at home...i can see already Brasil playing the final at Maracanã...

So just for you to have an idea of how it will be, take a look at these videos from the last game Brasil X Equador

Robinho, vai pra la que eu vou pra ca
Brasil X Equador

Rumo ao Hexa!!!! Brasil 2014!!!

A bif of History

® Felipe Russo

I just came back home from Leiden. It was a great weekend.... good friends, feijoada, cachaça and i saw loads of great work. I haven had time to organize all the stuff i collected ( links, mags, exhibits..new photographers), so i will publish a special post on dutch photography tomorrow.

For now a bit of history: photomuse. Organized by the International Center of Photography and the George Eastman House, Photomuse is a resource for scholarship in the history of photography.

Photographers Blogs

® Felipe Russo
These image is part of the project im currently working on "In Transit". I will soon publish the role project on my web site.

Being a photographer (trying to be one) is an intense and some times scary experience. Photography is a 24hour job...life and work become one. I spend most of my hours thinking about it or doing it. But its also very rewarding, i love it with all my heart!! Nothing better then a good day shooting...just being out there...meeting people and pushing your self to see things in a different way....it really opens ones world.
For me is really good to know that great photographers like David Alan Harvey and Alec Soth still have dougths...still have good and bad days..still need advice about there work.....and they share does feelings in there blogs. They also publish some great info and links...friday Alec Soth always publishes a poem.
David Alan Harvey took it to a extreme..he has 4 blogs!! He also created a space where you can upload work for review...and you have until 15 of november to upload work to compete for a 5000 dollar grant...good luck!!

David Alan Harvey's Blog

Alec Soth's Blog

Im going to Leiden (Holland) tomorrow to see a good freind, so dont thing i will post these weekend. We talk monday!!

La Fiac and a Sleepless night...

® Felipe Russo
Yes yesterday was a sleepless night...got to sleep at 6:00 in the morning!! My body was dead but my mind.... I started packing my books, dvds and other stuff to send back home... Im in my final weeks in Paris. So yesterday my mind kept me awake wondering about what was and what will be... The was part is a bunch of great memories of the last year and 3 month, when a lot happened and lot changed. I will really miss Paris...the hundreds of cities that "coexist" in one, going around by bike, the exhibits,the freedom to be far from all my past, my 14 scare meters "studio", the beauty (Paris is beautiful),the roof sessions, the lazy sundays by the canal, MK2,the three month at Magnum Photos, and especially all the great people i met here...the freinds i made and intent to keep!!
The part that will be, that was the part that kept me awake....im really happy to go home...Brasil is my home and the place i want to dedicate my work to!! The place where i have my roots, my family and life long freinds. But we never no what will be!! Thats scary and great at the same time.....Will see!!!

Sorry, dont know if you care about all that....

So let me give you some more information. These weekend was the FIAC ( Foire Internationale d" Art Contemporain) here in Paris. The event took over the Grand Palais and the Cour Carrée du Louvre. It was a huge event full of great work and some shit also...it was full of collectors and rich people looking for stuff to decorete there living rooms...everyone dressed up to look "artie", some even called more attention then the pieces and installations...and lots of people that can provoke nauzia just by the way they look at you...but lets go to the point. A Gallery from Tel Aviv called my attention because of the work of Pavel Wolberg a Russian photographer that lives in Israel for a long time, and give's us a personal inside view of the conflits between Israel and Palestine.

We talk tomorrow...cheers!!

Berlin

® Felipe Russo
After spending my summer in Paris doing an internship i had to travel a bit. Being in Paris doesn't have the traveling fill to it anymore. So i packed and went to Berlin for four days.

® Felipe Russo
I saw some great work... By Check-point Charlie (one of the checkpoints between east and west Berlin..today a disneyland for tourists) and the Berlin Wall memorial the french photographer and street artist JR shows with his project face2face that there's a wall still up between Palestinian Territories and Israel. I just hope it was also effective, as a message, for the tourists that where getting there passports stamped for 2 euros ( yes you can buy a communist stamp for your passport).
I had great pleasure visiting the Helmut Newton Foundation a temple for photography. Its great to see that places like these exist. The show "Wanted" was on...showing photos from Newton himself, Ralph Gibson and Larry Clark. Was great to see Larry Clarks work, i real punch in the face, life as it is ( or as it was for him and his freinds)...they where showing two of his series...nothing less then Tusla and Teenage Lust. If you have a change please go (Clark is also showing Tusla at MEP in Paris).
Another gallery i visited, and really recommend, is the C/O Berlin. The C/O is not just a gallery space, but it also promotes lectures, study groups, grants and is a publishing house. They are showing until December Thomas Koerfers private collection, in a show called Stripped Bare. The collection includes, Araki, Nan Goldin, Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Boris Mikhailov, Hellen Van Meene and Phillipe Lorca di Corcia.
But was also a good surprise to see the work of young french photographer Marion Poussier. She won a grant from the O/C for new talent and she had already exhibited in Arles these year,by indication of Raymond Depardon.

Ill post some more tomorrow..

Biology and Photography

Some of you must know already that before being a photographer i was a biologist (i still am). I started to look true some alternative photography processes, and realized that lots of then where created by biologists. Like the Cyanotipe, first used by Anna Atkins, a British Botanisist, to ilustrate her books about British Algae ( the picture above is part of her book British Algae: Cyanotipe Impressions first published at 1843).

Was also great to discover people still using these processes to explore the biota:



Take a look at Sthefani Valentin's work. She photographs insects using colour photograms.



And James Hajeck & Carol Panaro-Smith produce photograms from plants and algae.

Hope you like it...i had a big flashback!!

Cleaning up...

® Felipe Russo

Today a took the day to do a clean up. After a year of lots of shooting was good to sit down and take a look at all my production. I can tell a cleaned a lot of hard drive space. But was good also to find some lost pictures...pictures that at the time didnt call my attention. I decided to publish these one.
Its kind of a joke....i took it just in front of my house. But dont worry they where just shooting a movie ( its a very common scene in Paris). Just a nice example of how important is the context ( text, caption...) a picture is published....i could have created a nice story for these one.


Tomorrow i will post some more information.....some links, news...dont know...will see.

Some reading!!

Its always good to hear ( in these case read ) a bit from the big guys. Im sure you, like me, have a lot of questions you would love to ask for people like: William Eggleston, Eugene Richards, Alec Soth and Rinek Dijkstra. Anne- celine Jaeger just gave us some help. The book "Image Makers Image Takers" is a great collection of interviews.

Another very good text book is "On Being a Photographer" by David Hurn ( Magnum Photos) and Bill Jay. They have a great conversation about "Selecting a Subject". I found a pdf version here . Enjoy!!



For sure theres more people out there you would like to talk to!! How about......Graciela Iturbide, Max Pam, Duane Michals, Miguel Rio Branco, Philip-Lorca diCorcio, Alex Webb, Bernard Plassu, Javier Vallhonrat and Joan Fontcuberta. Yes, theres also a book of interviews with all these guys!! Its called Conversations with Contemporary Photographers

Hope you enjoy the reading....and please if you have any other information to add, leave a comment.

Street Art - Arte de Rua

Being born and raized in São Paulo, Brasil ( yes it is with S ) i ve being exposed to a lot of street art. São Paulo is an amazing open air gallery. Street art makes the city look better, and its also a way for people to fell more active in these crazy metropoli where the "one" almost dosent exist ( today there are almost 18million living in São Paulo). But thats not the point!! I always being interested by these manifests in the streets and will post here some stuff i like.

Off course i start by the Twins ( Os Gemeos). The image i posted is a sample of there work.
see there work here

Actually go to these link that you will get to no a lot of the artists in São Paulo street scene.

Another amazing artist is Banksy!! He is not from São Paulo, his British. Take a look at these transmition at you tube about his lattest work in the Wall that divides Palestina and Israel.
Go to his website an check out the rest of his work. There is some great stuff. I recomend wacthing the Disneyland video and the indoors section. And also read the Manifesto.

Now to have some fun check 99rooms and tell me if you made it to the end.

To finish, an online resource for street art information. Wooster Collective. And the GRL ( graffiti research lab ). They are developing new ways to hit the streets, using diferent medias like video projections.

After a period with almost no posting....im back and will be posting new stuff in a regular bases. Would love to hear from you, if you have any suggestions, any links...please help me...add a comment