portfolios — FLOAT

Jul 18

Jul 18 Renata Crespo

Men & Flowers Can Coexis | I like to introduce myself as a self-taught woman artist who began her journey after falling in love with photography at the age of 20, when on my birthday I was given a Canon 1200D, my first camera ever. Back in 2016 tho, I study the basics of photography at the School of Creative Photography of Havana.

I unravel concepts through the visual, using photography as my main medium. My work is a projection of my own experiences and personal battles. I use my art as a way of self- understanding and with the ultimate purpose of educating and give representation to the issues I have faced.

My practice has been recognised by institutions and publications such the Rotterdam Photo Festival and the contemporary art magazine Al-Tiba9. My art has been featured on many digital platforms with a feminist and integrationist approach. Feminist, Curated by GIRLS and Black is Mag are some of them. Another recent highlight of my journey was being included in the Black Women Photographers collective.

As someone who comes from a very ‘‘men don’t cry’’ society, the male figure has always lacked in fragility for me even though, I’ve always believed in the potential of women and men, equally.

In Cuba it is almost impossible to escape from the indoctrination of male superiority, that is brought to us in micro-doses to our daily life. Most of the time we don't even stop to think about some specific behaviours because we are so used to following those patterns since we are little, that we don't even question them anymore.

The identification and recognition of a term: Micro-machismo played a significant role in the motivation to start this project.

The realisation of these commonly unperceived acts of violence taking place in everyday life against women in Cuba, was one of the first culture shocks I confronted once living in The Netherlands. It absolutely astounded me, so I decided to start a project wherein I capture manhood along with the delicacy of such a frailness symbol as is a flower.

For ''Men and Flowers can coexist'' so far I have captured Cuban and Dutch men; friends I've met along the way who share the vision of the series, are committed to gender equality, and condemn toxic masculinity. renatacrespophotography.vsble.me

Jul 8

Jul 8 Wong Chung-Wai

So Long Hong Kong, So Long | Since January of 2021, there is a minimum of three flights every day fully loaded with Hongkongers, leaving Hong Kong for the UK. It is expected that 250,000 to 320,000 Hong Kong residents will immigrate to the UK in the next five years. This mass migration wave is a consequence of the anti-government protests in 2019 and the increasing threat from the mainland Chinese government.

‘This is no longer the city I once knew.’

In the mind of these people, they are leaving Hong Kong permanently, with the risks of never being able to go back. I myself was one of the people on those planes. Leaving the city that I loved for my whole life, with the feelings of perplexity and depression of leaving my family, friends, and career behind.

All the photographs in SO LONG HONG KONG, SO LONG were taken during the time of such a dramatic change to the city of Hong Kong between 2020 and 2021.

In the beginning, I can see this work as my farewell letter to Hong Kong, and also to the first half of my life. But when I continue developing this body of works, I kept asking questions to myself. What makes me follow the footsteps of my parents forty years ago, to escape from socialist China once again. What is the force behind all these? Pushing people away from their homelands. What is this modern migration wave means to a place, to a clan, to a family, and to a man? I realized this work is more than personal, it is also a conversation about the complexity of HongKongers' identity and cultural roots.

By displaying the sense of change in Hong Kong, in terms of time and emotions. These images show a certain kind of atmosphere in the city right now after the failure of the democratic movement in 2019. An undeniable sense of complexity, powerlessness, uncertainty, fate, hesitation, and the loss of hope.

I would like to use this work to share these thoughts with the world, and to the audience who care about Hong Kong, and care about the people who are still there and those who came from there.

After all, I always felt I was only telling the first half of the whole story. So what is next? What is the second half of this story? Do those people who have left found their homeland, their promised land, on this another side of the world? What if they haven't? What if they've failed? www.chungwaiwong.com

Jun 20

Jun 20 DMT

HOLYDAY | HOLYDAY is an ongoing documentary project shot in film, from October 2021 onwards. Every day has its own terror and holiness and it is in identifying with the oddities and mundanities that comfort is found.

After a year of nothingness that followed two close interactions with death, I began taking photos again, borrowing my grandfather's film camera. In that year, I had come out as non-binary and realised I was neurodiverse. HOLYDAY is as much a celebration of finding oneself in the small, patterned eccentricities of everyday life, as it is a narrative of processing PTSD. It features a lot of mirrors and glasses, mirroring the curiously reflective nature of the project.

It is photography, not as an answer or a question, but as a place to go when the world is otherwise loud. dmterblanche.com

Jun 14

Jun 14 Rafael Quesada

Standing Still | Produced during 2020-21 in The Netherlands, this project represents the charm I encounter in the ordinary. I’m attracted to those everyday things that are just standing there, without drawing attention but somehow representing a relation between human and nature.
These photographs are the result of a year of walks, observations and reflections in the provinces of North Holland and Gelderland. A view of my relationship with the dutch surroundings in the time where the world was standing still. photo.rafaquesada.com

Russell C. Banks

Jun 13

Jun 13 Russell C. Banks

Floating World | As passenger and artist, I both embrace and witness the tension between the dream and the reality— that amorphous border between our mundane, daily lives and the packaged, fantasy world the cruise industry sells. I see it as a metaphor for how many of us live—who we are at this time.

I’m drawn to situations where the veneer of elegance and glamour seems a bit thin, and the humor and irony begin to show through. And behind it all is desire: our human need to be indulged, to feel special, to get the selfie.

This project started in 2016, when I began walking the ships with a camera to make something interesting during my wife’s favorite kind of vacation. My photojournalism degree from long ago led me to document the overdone decor, the specialized architecture and best of all—the way the passengers adapted to this artificial environment. As the body of work took form, I named it after the “Floating World,” (Ukiyo) of Japan’s Edo period, where privileged society gathered to seek pleasure and relaxation through art, entertainment and a variety of indulgences.

After the pandemic’s onset, the fleet was grounded for nearly two years, but in fall 2021 the ships resumed sailing, and I am happy to be working again, just as thousands of others were eager to reenter the Floating World after a dark and difficult time. russellcbanks.com

Joshua McMillan

Jun 7

Jun 7 Joshua McMillan

Midnight at Sixty-Four | The midnight hour is a time that nearly everyone associates with darkness.

Sitting at 64 ° North, the weeks surrounding summer solstice in Dawson City, Yukon prove to give a different representation to midnight. Though the sun dips low, it never goes away. Casting a warm quiet glow over the town through the middle of the night.

Midnight at Sixty-Four is simply an observation of this midnight light & the characteristics it gives to the bright, historically rich northern town.

I would like to acknowledge that the photographs were made on the First Nation territory of the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in. www.joshuadmcmillan.com

Daniel John Bracken

May 10

May 10 Daniel John Bracken

Daniel John Bracken is a Visual Artist working primarily with photography. Originally from New York, Daniel has just recently finished the MA Photography programme at the Royal College of Art. Focusing on interdisciplinary relations among space, time, and the diary within photography, the artists work traverses traditional notions on looking. Currently based in London, Daniel has had works featured in a number of group exhibitions and publications that have been displayed throughout Europe and the United States.

‘It’s Safe Behind the Glass’ is a working title, taken from an enclosure sign at London Zoo.

Forming an illustration of time loss, the photographs conceptualise a gap between the perceived and physical – brushing against fleeting moments within the domestic and the natural worlds. The images string together a narrative that alters our perceptions on looking. Much like spectres of memory, they slip into and out of sequence, showing an affected familiar moment; a nod towards the Uncanny. The photographs become timeless and frozen. Drawn from personal dreams and memories: archives, manuscripts, and novels become the main inspirations for delineating images. Referencing Virginia Woolf’s narrative techniques, the photographs drift past autobiography - out of their timelines, out of their environments; and become familiar moments that have been forever changed. It is in these gaps that the body finds its weightlessness. Abysses of anonymity, of time loss. A shift out of space – out of time. The images further contrast meticulous human intervention through evidence of craft and labour. The natural world becomes changed, almost forced to stop. Time that has been lost, trapped in the instant, but mostly forgotten in these spaces. Abandoned. The defiled grave, the decrepit rituals. Research into Victor Turner’s Liminal and Liminoid become important: these ritualistic moments between “being” and “becoming”.

Perhaps this is where the photographs sit: as the Double within nature, a mirror to time. The viewer is forced to look between the perceived and the photographic. www.danieljohnbracken.com

May 9

May 9 Jukka Tilus

From Where the Planes Leave | City of Vantaa in southern Finland spreads to both sides of the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. I moved to Vantaa a few years ago and this ongoing series is about my wanderings in Vantaa suburbs and somewhere between them. Jukka Tilus is a photographer and artist currently living in Vantaa Finland. His work is very much based on concepts like coincidence, improvisation and unplannedness. jukkatilus.com

Apr 21

Apr 21 Adil Manzoor

Thake' peynd | There’s a Kashmiri idiom I recall my grandparents saying: When you take a tree that is rooted in the ground and transfer it from one place to another, the tree will no longer bear fruit. And if it does, the fruit will not be as good as it was in its original place. Over time, I have found that this knowledge about trees does not extend as a metaphor for human belonging. As modernity grows its piercing roots into our current times, some people weren’t left a choice to be still as a tree.

Some have a home and outlive its comfort; they leave, feel nostalgic, restless, and homesick, but don’t have any other option than move out, to escape ennui, death. Some have to search for and create homes in other cities, from one apartment to another, in one person or another, not only to find themselves at home once again, but to make new meanings of the word home. As a photographer, this nomadic existence has taught me how to find solace in strangers.

I would never have thought of leaving the city as the summers were cool and winters snowy and we're enclosed by the mountains and have some of the largest fresh lakes. I used to spend the days of my childhood learning to swim, catching butterflies, and playing cricket.

As the clouds pressed lower and the mountains became red, the last bit of innocence was slowly squeezed out of my childhood. A rush of blood and suffering came up to the surface, and suddenly I was thrown into the throes for Aazadi — curfews, strikes, teargas, police, army and taranas. Winters used to be windy, harsh, solitary, and quiet. I knew the war wouldn’t finish in a month or two. It has come true: it looks like the war will never end.

When I'm bored, I start taking photographs; of my folks, or if I'm in a different city I try to find a home in other people. I try to find in them both the cool summers and snowy winters I know to be home. Whenever I travel back to my home, I end up discussing everything under the sun with my friends who are around. Lately, we’ve been talking about how we become people of multiple cities, and how we might be able to figure it out, to live with this more-than-oneness?

For a few weeks now, I've been back home with my family, and often, I'm bored. I go back to my familiar sport, taking pictures. Sometimes, these photos capture my cousins and my aunts, the spaces I occupy and move through, seizing a few moments of their lives.

The place I call home is very bright and beautiful but also bleak — like a deserted heart. One of my friends recently texted me, you're from a city of stars, but little does she know it's always moonless, this city.

Note: Thake' pyend' is a Kashmiri word that denotes a resting spot or home. A home is more than a space where your soul gets peace. A home necessarily doesn't happen to have a structure, it can be a person, house or anything which doesn't even have a material shape or form.

Catherine LeComte

Apr 19

Apr 19 Catherine LeComte

I am using digital photography and collage to explore the connections between images, memory, and visual recordings. Images can bind memories, and through archival photographs of my familial relationships, I revisit the past and reprocess those events. I explore how I might remember an event differently from another who was also there, and I am interested in how recorded memories can be transmuted and altered to form a new narrative.

I use the VCR tapes my father recorded of my family and I from the 1990’s as another visual method to revisit my childhood. I play the tapes in rewind, and photograph the scenes as they appear. If I revisit the past, what will I uncover? I recently started using my fathers 8mm film camera, the same camera that recorded me, to record my present day moments. How are my present day memories connected to the ones I have of the past?

EMDR is a therapeutic technique in which one memory is selected and reprocessed per session. With each session, I unweave technologies that recorded me in the same way that EMDR unweaves my mind from the past. I am interested in what memories have shaped who I am, and how reliving those events through past technologies can help me reprocess them. www.catherinelecomte.com

Apr 18

Apr 18 Ava Pavlenč

All thing You | Life is a constant process of change. We evolve with time, grow through experiences and beco-me a different version of ourselves at different stages of our lives. However, our identity goes beyond our physical presence. It is not solely something that defines us while we are alive, but it is something we leave behind for people to remember us by.

Twelve years ago, I lost my father. Trying to cope with grief I returned to places he liked to visit, listened to music he enjoyed and sur-rounded myself with things he owned. I realised that whilst my father is physically absent, his identity and who he was is still omnipotent. As a young man, he opened his own gallery where established painters exhibited and sold their work. The gallery was a great success, with the local newspapers often featuring an article about it. He expanded his business and ope-ned a workshop where people could get their paintings framed.

My father spent hours per-fecting his work and once he was happy with the end result, he would stamp his logo on the back of each painting, wanting people to know his work. Our family kept most of the paintings and they are now displayed in our family home. We kept a lot of other things that belonged to my father. The one I always have on me is his gold bracelet, gifted to me by my mother on my eighteenth birthday. It was her way of giving my father’s gift to me, since he could not be there to celebrate the big milestone.

Sometimes it‘s hard to go through big milestones in life without him by my side, to celebrate big moments yet always having an empty chair, a spot where he should be, but isn‘t. Over the years some of the things had to be thrown away, but we kept one despite everyo-ne wanting to get rid of it decades ago: a red armchair that has been moving around with my family for over 25 years. My father insisted on keeping it because ‘it‘s still good enough’ even though we didn‘t need it anymore.

Twelve years after my father’s passing, we still have that same armchair. Maybe it‘s because we‘re still not ready to let go of certain things that remind us of our lives before he was gone.

To reconnect to the past and somehow feel closer to my father I often go through family pictures to remind myself of a moment in time I had forgotten or was too young to remember. There are many photos of me cuddling up to my father and although I don‘t remember the exact moment the picture was taken I still re-member the comfort and safety of his embra-ce. I have one of those pictures tattooed on my arm, to commemorate my father and to never forget the precious moments we shared. Loo-king through these archives I often rediscover who he was. Not only as a father but also as a friend, as a business man and as a husband.

Just like my father, we will leave behind a small mark in this big world and so long as our sto-ries are told, the memory of us will stay alive. Even after we are gone our identity remains constant. www.avapavlenc.com

Apr 14

Apr 14 Jacob Black

Forget Me Not | Lockdown and the global pandemic forced many home to isolate in aid of our personal and collective health. This period enabled reflection our environments became our companions our world. Moving from the bustling streets of Peckham London to the rural sanctity of South Devon the place of my adolescents. I became immersed in the environment that cradled and defined much of my existence. Enticed by its beauty and mysteries I began noticing the water reflection on the fallen trees the flight and the songs of the birds. These scenes were magnificent but amid the beauty natural peculiarities began to plague my conscious. Dark figures flashes of light permeating the blackness I became unable to decipher fiction from reality. I started to question my psyche why was I unable to rationally experience the natural wild world as I had remembered it.

'Forget Me Not' explores the death and destruction of the wild world within the physical and metaphysical. How we struggle to process seemingly ordinary natural events as our lives and spirits become urbanised. The work is a theatrical and mystical journey into the forgotten exploring mythology and hallucinations within the confines of a still image while conceiving unique from physical landscapes. 'Forget Me Not' thus attempts to create an experimental visual language into the understanding education and experiences of the British wilderness. jacobblack.format.com

Apr 7

Apr 7 Noah Fodor

Violent Histories | McKees Rocks, PA, a few minutes outside the city of Pittsburgh, has a harrowing past led by the politician James J. Westwood. His menacing time in the area begins in the late 1890s’ when he discovered a skull on top of the ancient burial mound in the area and decided to kick it into the Ohio river. Later, he began his career in crime. Starting with the “mysterious” death of his daughter by gunshot as he found her lying in the fetal position. Then came his role in the bombing of another man in the area running against him, defrauding the community, and various election crimes. This all led to his final act of violence, the murder of his wife Martha, as he stole up his back staircase and shot her three times through the window. This is a story of corruption, greed, power, suppression, and violence fueled by the desire for control.

Through images, archival photographs, text from the story of The Promised Land in the bible and newspaper articles recounting Westwood’s narrative, Violent Histories depicts a modern landscape of McKees Rocks, PA and retells the life of Westwood and his crimes. A new American history can also be untwisted. Filled with a truth that America would rather not admit as layers are peeled back and contradict the celebratory and “imagined” versions of America that are central to the façade America hides behind.

Like Westwood’s time in McKees Rocks, the same corruption, greed, and hunger for power by any means necessary can be seen in American history. Only this is disguised through romantic notions of overcoming adversity and hardships, and the idolization of colonizers. From Columbus to the Pilgrims and Puritans, their stories are wrapped up in the same themes as Westwood’s life. Charged by greed and under the name of God, justification is created for genocidal violence and othering. Inaccurate narratives paint these colonizers as heroes and worthy of worship, when their only form of power is through means of terror and exploitation, not “hard work” or determination. www.noahfodor.com

Leslie Shang Zhefeng

Mar 22

Mar 22 Leslie Shang Zhefeng

Cypress Slope | “Cypress Slope” is a project named after my hometown.It was photographed in 2020 and presents my family’s origins by collecting information in Baoji, Shaanxi, a rural village in western China. What the last four generations of my family experienced tells the identity of ordinary Chinese families in the modern century.

Through the research of their own family history and the arrangement of family materials, using old photos, letters, video screenshots, interviews and surveys as clues, the life experience of four generations is linked together, and the life history of ordinary Chinese families in the modern and modern centuries is narrated. It has been confirmed that the ancestors came from the Big Locust tree in Hongdong, Shanxi Province, 600 years ago, during the first year of Hongwu of the Ming Dynasty from 1368 to 1418. After several migrations, he settled on cypress Slope. The author's great-grandfather mortgaged his house because he smoked cigarettes. After his grandfather was born, his mother had no milk to feed, so he found a wet nurse in the village of Cypress Slope. My grandfather stayed on in Cypress Slope as an adult and raised a family. www.instagram.com/leslieshang_

Mar 21

Mar 21 Bill Gore

Song of the Saugatuck | This project began with winter walks along the Saugatuck River and a fascination with the cascading falls, the dark pools, and the gleaming ice formations. My image making is grounded in photographs of the river and all that I see in the present tense. But I am drawn to digital imagery as an avenue into my mental pictures of the energy of the rushing waters and the life forces that unite and nourish all that lives along the riverbanks. In making these images my thoughts and feelings go back to the people that once lived here and at the same time fast forward to the future.

The Saugatuck River has nurtured indigenous cultures for thousands of years. The most recent inhabitants were the Paugussetts who were erased by the colonists leaving only their word “saugatuck” meaning flowing waters. The culture of the white man causes change and so now we must ask what comes next. Will these waters continue to flow and what happens when the winter months are too warm for ice to form?www.billgorephotography.com

Mar 15

Mar 15 R. J. Kern

In 2016, I made portraits of youth contestants at Minnesota county fairs. Each participant—some as young as four years old— spent a year raising an animal, which they entered into a 4-H livestock competition. None of the youth I photographed succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they have given to their animal.
Four years later, in 2020, I returned to photograph the young subjects, asking them what they carried forward from their previous experience. Some of them have continued to pursue animal husbandry while others developed other interests. We imagine some of these kids will choose to continue running their family farms, an unpredictable and demanding way to make a living.

As I created the second group of photographs, I asked them what were their thoughts, their dreams, and their goals for the future? How do they fit in the future of agricultural America?

The Unchosen Ones depicts the bloom of youth and the mettle of the kids who grow up on farms, reminding us how resilient children can be when confronted with life’s inevitable disappointments. The formal quality of the lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their years, revealing self-direction dedication in some, and in others, perhaps, the pressures of traditions imposed upon them. The portraits capture a particular America, a rural world, and a time in life when the layered emotions of youth are laid bare. www.rjkern.com

Michiko Chiyoda

Mar 8

Mar 8 Michiko Chiyoda

I am ready to dream a dream with her | My dear Midori-San, How have you been there since we last communicated? I am still here and would like to ask you to wait for me for a while.

I want to reiterate how precious the moments I had with you are to me, as I look back over the five years we spent together while creating our works. I remember you said ‘thank you’ at times, but I am wondering how many times I said it to you, so I am writing you this letter.

I love your ‘SOMEBANA’ works, which are fabricated from your sensitive mind and fingers. It was five years ago, in the winter of 2015, when you asked me to join you in your work based on the theme of Prayer, I was absolutely thrilled. At the same time, however, I was shocked and lost for words upon your confession of having stage-3 cancer. “God knows my way to go from now on.” You simply added the phrase ---- as if you were trying to ease my silence. You always seemed to be imperturbably calm to me, and I assumed it was because you held certain prayers inside. I remember, I once asked what prayer meant to you. Your answer was “Prayer means dialogue with God, and my flowers embody it.” I am not sure I could understand it instantly, but I was mysteriously moved on the spot.

I visited Nagatsuka Monastery in Hiroshima, which you introduced me to, and at that time, my purpose was to try to find and understand the meaning of prayer for me. I spent days there, in a calm and silent environment surrounded by forest. I tried to speak to myself, and seek my innermost essence. I think I could have experienced moments of being filled with gratitude, and I sometimes felt unstable arrogant emotions. I think that there, I discovered that prayer for me just meant my wishes. I knew I could do nothing for her fate coming to an end. I have to admit, I was always frustrated that I had no power to change it and, as a result, I felt a tightness in my chest. One thing--just one thing--I could make up my mind there was that I would keep creating works with you, and keep dreaming a dream in which we share our joy in the accomplishment of our collaborations down the road. This finally made me feel like I was reaching prayer.

The monastery had many windows, and I stared at the holy, transparent streams of light they emitted, timelessly. Your delight with the title of our work that I sent you never leaves my memory, and shortly returned, saying, ‘Souls never die.’ I hope you are also looking forward to meeting me, and just in case, I would like to make extra sure to let you know that you have to be prepared for my many questions that go along with my many thanks from the bottom of my heart. Sincerely, Michiko www.michikochiyoda.com

Mar 7

Mar 7 Sandra Bacchi

Watermelons Are Not Strawberries | In Watermelons Are Not Strawberries, I portray my inner transformation and pursuit of self-awareness while navigating the challenges related to parenting. The black and white photographs blend conceptual and documentary photography that reveals the shapes and shadows of my love for motherhood as it merges with a lifetime of my personal anxiety.

Over six years, the work grew into a story of resilience, hope, and mutual support between my children and me. in this creative process, I found the strength to heal old wounds by examining universal feelings such as sadness, happiness, and love.

My two daughters were challenged with severe food allergies and learning differences in their early years. In helping them cope with their adversities, was forced to delve into my dark places to confront the deeply entrenched fear, shame, and guilt that stem from my then-undiagnosed dyslexia and celiac disease.

I didn't want my girls to feel the constant neurotic need to fit into the social norms, as I did my whole life. so, we established our own “normal” way to live our lives, creating a sense of complicity and empathy among each other, building a stronger relationship.

While I was advocating for my daughters, I learned how to advocate for myself. While I was trying to understand them, I deeply understood myself. sandrabacchi.com

Mar 2

Mar 2 Jaime Alvarez

Fishtown Daily | Fishtown Daily is a documentary project about the transformation of Fishtown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia. Fishtown is on the shore of the Delaware River, and butts up against three neighborhoods, Northern Liberties, Port Richmond, and Kensington. The whole area used to be filled with warehouses and factories until they started shutting down in the middle of the 20th century. Now developers have come in and demolished older building and warehouses in order to try to fit in as many new projects as possible, raising prices and taxes of people that have lived here for decades. www.jaimephoto.com

Feb 28

Feb 28 Vanessa Leroy

as our bodies lift up slowly (ongoing) | There isn’t a lot of space for dreaming in an oppressive world, so I use photography as a tool to create worlds where I freely navigate the various facets of my life experience and identity as a black queer woman. In this body of work titled "as our bodies lift up slowly," I weave the viewer between the past and present using archival family photographs, text, collages, and environmental portraits. I’m inspired by Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, in which the young black protagonist Dana Franklin navigates a shifting timeline to uncover truths about her family lineage.

Additionally, I employ text from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, a story following a formerly enslaved woman named Sethe whose home is haunted by the spirit of her deceased child, creating a situation where she and her daughter are constantly swallowed by the overwhelming grief of losing years of life to brutal slavery and the loss of a life that never got to grow. I create photographs that speak to and comfort my younger self, and the versions of myself that struggled to carry the weight of having poor mental health and low self-esteem. In revisiting the past and imagining the future, I have created space for myself to heal in the present. vanessaleroy.com