EDITORS’ PICK
Real Life and Fantasy
OPEN CALL
Open Call Editors’ Pick
Following Alex Prager’s selection of winning images for our recent OPEN CALL competition, this compilation of 20 images, selected by the Life Framer editors represents some of the other talented photographers whose work struck us and left a mark. Each a stunning image worthy of exposure and attention…
These are intended to be a conversation starter… so feel free to join the discussion on our social networks.
BANNER IMAGE COURTESY OF TOM LEIGHTON
www.tleighton.com / @tomleightonart
From the series Kynance – “Kynance is an ongoing series which focusses on the extraordinary force of volcanic geology. In this landscape we are confronted with rare evidence of the colossal pressures which once created the surface of the earth.
I am finding that lockdown has, for me, forced a shift of focus. While environmental and political change accelerates at an unprecedented rate, I am now looking at transformations which happened over a very different timescale. These images feature a terrain which would seem to be immutable, belying its turbulent and explosive past. The rock formations signal a manifestation of the planet’s physical history: times of stability veined with turbulent change, fault lines which can be seen as a metaphor for our current human landscape.
The colours reference the vibrancy of volcanic eruptions, the molten rock and toxic hot gases – demonstrating also a process billions of years old, which must inevitably remain mysterious and imagined in spite of the clues which a science of the earth can offer. An unnatural palette enhances both the otherness of these rare formations and the inherent vivid appearance of the crystal flecked and veined serpentine rock. Here the towering and tumbling forms, with their scaly layered surface, become creature-like, each with an individually defiant and imposing personality.”
Editor’s comment: Tom uses post-processing to re-interpret this volcanic landscape, using alien hues to enhance the majesty of the rocks and the immense history they bear. The result is something colossal and beautiful, bringing an awe to the world around us.
IMAGE COURTESY OF ELENA SUSLOVA
@zzuzel
“October self portrait.”
Editor’s comment: A gorgeous self-portrait which, through multi-exposure and intense, fiery colors, turns the mundane into something dramatic and magical. Elena captures herself indoors looking outwards – a state that most of us can relate to over the last few months – and yet portrays a world of possibility, rather than one of restriction.
IMAGE COURTESY OF ROKAS MORKUNAS
www.rokasmorkunas.com
Editor’s comment: Most concert images are interwoven with the artist and event, and say little to the viewer without that specific connection. There’s something artistic and universal about this shot though – the way this single figure is highlighted in white light against a sea of blue faces makes for something strangely beautiful, and the idea of standing behind (or indeed being!) ‘that guy’ is something we can all relate to. It’s a playful, artful shot.
IMAGE COURTESY OF JUSTIN LISTER
www.justinlister.com / @justinlisterphoto
“Basement Yellow – Hope after the death of a loved one. Shot on a set I built.”
Editor’s comment: An exquisitely realized images that muses on love and loss. The combination of an emotion so consuming with the monochrome wood paneling of the surroundings makes for something quite claustrophobic and affecting. The open door feels symbolic – perhaps of a state before the sorrow arrived, or perhaps the hint of a way out.
IMAGE COURTESY OF ELIM PAN
www.explorerofpeople.com / @elimpan
Editor’s comment: A gorgeous, poetic portrait that uses negative space quite effectively to both create distance, and intensify the connection with the sliver of Elim’s subject that is visible. It’s a quiet, abstract portrait, but no less compelling for it.
IMAGE COURTESY OF BEN JESBERG
@benjesberg
“The crux of my photography is capturing things that people forgot, an overgrown tree branch, a long abandoned corral, a way of life. By slowing down into the monotonies of life we find that the world did not forget, that things still exist as they are, that nothing truly disappears. Everything has been created by forces external to itself, shaped by hands seen and unseen. With my photography I make the effort to bring to light the products of these labors that may otherwise go unnoticed.”
Editor’s comment: Using his photography to “bring to light the products of labors that may otherwise go unnoticed”, Ben presents an image that is quietly beguiling. The tight framing acts to flatten the scene – an almost-illusion to a building whose human usage has long passed, and that is slowly being reclaimed by nature. It’s a great example of subtle observation.
IMAGE COURTESY OF LAURA MA
www.laurama.net / @studiolaurama
From the series Beauty Queens – “Beauty Queen is an artistic series about women and their place in a main patriarchy society. I decided to represent some of the most iconic women in different eras of humanity. Living legends and still after their death but also the symbol of their own vulnerability. This art series is about women’s beauty standards throughout history. An aesthetic satire, a visual paradox. The goal is to question our time from a social and cultural point of view. Emphasize our relationship about identity & society. It’s a decapitated still-life photograph, well representative of a Memento-Mori suffocated. They are between glamorous heroines and victims straight out of a tragedy. These characters evolve in a saturated pop color set-up with a strong meaning revealing a much darker condition. History is an infinite inspiration. Beauty Queen highlights the social pressure at different times for the most iconic women, by the past until now. The story is always about a sacrifice of her own happiness.”
Editor’s comment: A fascinating image that draws on classics themes and symbolism, while feeling fresh and contemporary. It seems to play with dichotomies – light and darkness, youth and aging – to explore the place of a young woman, particularly a woman of color, in today’s society. There’s tragedy, but there’s also beauty – even the blood sparkles with glitter.
IMAGE COURTESY OF LISA WINNER
www.lisawinnerphotography.com / @lisawinnerphotography
”Working from Home. Associate Vice Principal Tanya Susoev works from home while her newborn baby nurses during a conference call. Tanya was forced to come back to work early from her maternity to leave to assist with the transition to full online remote learning.”
Editor’s comment: A portrait that captures so much of the zeitgeist – the Black Lives Matter movement, and of course the pandemic and working from home – while celebrating the resilience and adaption of this multi-tasking new mother. It’s an image for our times!
IMAGE COURTESY OF KATHRYN WEINSTEIN
@life_of_riley_retired
Editor’s comment: This is a powerful issue that confronts grief and loss. Photographing from behind Kathryn creates a sense of intimacy without intrusion, and a clean composition that highlights the empty wall in front of her subjects – symbolic perhaps of the all-consuming nature of such emotions.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MAX MIECHOWSKI
www.maxmiechowski.com / @maxmiechowski
From the series A Big Fat Sky – ” Growing up in Britain, none of us were ever more than 70 miles from the sea; the quirky coastal towns, arcades and candy floss, naff looking rides and fish and chips. A brave swim in the cold and murky waters if we fancied it. When I was a kid we would always take trips to the east coast. Mostly to Skegness, but sometimes Norfolk or Yorkshire.
Recently, I have found myself going back. Taking long trips along the country’s edge, exploring the towns and landscapes overlooking the North Sea. Surprisingly, these trips have given me the same sense of fascination and wonder that I felt as a child – they have served as an escape from the city, and an opportunity to find beauty in scenes that seem so familiar to all of us. Often it has felt like stepping back in time, to an atmosphere and pace that feels different to what I’ve grown used to whilst living in London.
The seaside plays an important role in British leisure time, with many families and individuals relying on it for a break from stressful work routines and city life. This has recently been emphasised by the restrictions on international travel bought about by the global pandemic. Where many of us had grown used to finding our fun in warmer, more exotic destinations, we have now been left with the coastal towns and resorts that many of us left behind as children.
The stress and anxiety caused by the current global situation has us all looking for opportunities to unwind. Despite overlooking it for years, the British seaside has provided us with the space to do that – an opportunity to reconnect to the sea, and in many way to ourselves.”
Editor’s comment: A wonderfully observed portrait of two young girls at the beach, captured in warm, golden hour lighting. Their expressions – forlorn and distracted – are intriguing; weariness at the end of a long day, or a hint at something bigger?
IMAGE COURTESY OF MOUNEB TAIM
”In war life has a different meaning – everything that is normal simply disappears. The daily routine is definitely not normal, even if it seems normal to the people who live in the respective places. Bombs fall, people die and buildings are destroyed every day. The reality of the war cannot be denied, and yet there are people who persistently try to face the bitterness of this terrible war: with their determination, their hope and their desire to live. This project shows the efforts of the civilian population to make the war in the occupied territory in the Syrian Eastern Ghouta forgotten after the place was besieged for more than five years by the armed forces of the Syrian government. The occupation ended when the Syrian regime, with the support of Russian forces, forcibly relocated people after months of bombing the area. Thousands were killed and the area was completely destroyed.”
Editor’s comment: Photography can make us feel many things, but this image is particularly powerful. Photographing these boys against the rubble of their bomb-destroyed school, Mouneb captures the tragic reality of war – the very real impacts on innocent people completely detached from the politics and ideologies of conflict. These boys look so small and vulnerable in the rubble, almost hemmed-in by the sharp cables of reinforced concrete to their left. There is at least some hope in their togetherness but the overwhelming emotion is one of sadness and futility.
IMAGE COURTESY OF PIONARA
www.pionara.co.kr / @pionara
From the series How to Store your Stuff in Nature – ” Lotus + mouse pad, mouse – Floating wide and flat lotus leaves resulted in a change of space where the surface of the water felt like a floor on which objects could be arranged.
I stayed in Indonesia and Thailand for a year and a half. During my stay in the tropics, the new flora of tropical area brought me a new perspective and interest to the plant. The project that started with this interest is the series ‘How to store your stuff in nature’. On the surface, this project seems to be a kind of introduction that introduces various ways to organize and store stuff with plants, but in substance, it is the artwork of creating a temporarily existing three-dimensional work that emphasizes the shape, texture, and thickness of the plant. Photography, the medium of this work, is not only for the photograph itself but also for recording the form that can only be present for a limited period due to the nature of sculpture and installation with a living plant.
Objects in the photographs were carefully selected with the standards that can resemble or emphasize the shape and texture of the plant, and that the plant can support its weight and volume. In the photographs where the ordinary stuff is matched, the viewer can guess the characteristics of a certain plant such as the actual shape of the plant, the thickness of the leaves supporting the weight of objects, and the distance between the fruits. At the same time, through the scenes where objects and plants imitate each other’s shape, and by granting new roles to store things to plant, both familiar plants and objects become unfamiliar.”
Editor’s comment: A playful and creative composition that through mimicry of technology with nature invites us to consider their interconnectedness and our relationship with both. It feels light-hearted and mischievous, and the colors are just irresistible.
IMAGE COURTESY OF ADA BLIGAARD SØBY
www.istillmissdavidbowie.com / @dogpoison
Editor’s comment: It’s a shame no statement is provided with this image, as it’s a fascinating piece of creative mixed-media work, drawing inspiration from artists such as Mana Morimoto and Melissa Zexter. We see two figures – one present and happy, the other sad and distant, clinging on by only a thin thread. Is it an image about loss? That the photographed subject is inverted is an interesting decision – making the stronger emotion that of melancholy rather than joy.
IMAGE COURTESY OF EDUARD ZENTSIK
www.saatchiart.com/photozentsik / @photo_zentsik
”Goddess Rave 1900. Magic for magic’s sake. The psilocybin experience transferred to photography art. A new dimension based on pure consciousness. A real journey into yourself. Show me your infinity. The similarity of the world with a fantasy world.”
Editor’s comment: This is an interesting style of digital art, taking an artist at their easel and distorting them with heavy post-processing, the image rupturing in static before our eyes. The photographer’s intention isn’t necessarily clear, but the result is arresting.
IMAGE COURTESY OF IOANNA NATSIKOU
www.ioannanatsikou.com / @natsikoui
From the series Interlude in Blue – ”Interlude in Blue is a body of work touching upon themes of loneliness, isolation and alienation while dealing with ideas of beauty, fantasy, theatricality and reality. It is a journey exploring physical displacement, as well as of social and psychological dislocation. While being particularly interested in representing the fissure that exists between the individual’s identity and the society’s reality, I also wanted to engage the viewer in the beauty of reverie and self-absorption.”
Editor’s comment: A beautiful image that feels cinematic and mysterious. With her bright red hair, its color repeated in the brake lights around her, this lady is a beacon, and perhaps our guide to this strange new land.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARTIN T RAGGIO
www.martintraggio.com / @martintraggio
From the series Fernweg – ”The impurity of passion. This is how I perceive my life. A highway of many destinations. What I see in people, I see in myself. I compose both elements into sub-real portraits by combining aspects of still life that signal memento mori i.e. time passing. I am based on personal experiences and growth by reflecting on ways of life and destinations.”
Editor’s comment: An interesting portrait that draws on religious and historical symbolism, using soft and hard elements, flowers and barbed wire, to create something quite abstract and intriguing.
IMAGE COURTESY OF ARSENIY NESKHODIMOV
www.neskhodimov.com / @neskhodimov
From the series Prozac – “This is an ongoing project that I started a few years ago. I called it Prozac after a famous antidepressant prescribed for the treatment of major depressive disorder. I have been prone to depression since my childhood. Finding antidepressants unhelpful, I decided to get out of Moscow and find somewhere I could be happier, chronicling my own experiences. But the depression followed me wherever I go. Self-portrait in Aida Hotel.”
Editor’s comment: Artfully shot in the low light of a single lamp, Arseniy’s self-portrait is an eloquent meditation on depression, lethargy and insomnia. The tension and anguish are palpable.
IMAGE COURTESY OF JING GUO
www.guojing.me / @soundbbg
From the series Snow – “This is a ruin, the city is changing fast, many old houses are facing demolition, this is a piece of old houses left behind. There are still some people living here, but most of them have moved away and those who still live here live a hard life.”
Editor’s comment: A fantastic image taken in winter on a construction site in China. Framing these two ladies dead-center of the scene, we’re drawn to the bond between them in the most bleak of surroundings – a glimpse of humanity in the sterile face of a non-descript landscape, and unrelenting pace of construction. The use of complimentary colors – how their red coats pop against the green hoardings – is a visual bonus.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARIA IONOVA-GRIBINA
www.ionovagribina.ru / @mariaionovagribina
“Almost all types of modern weapons have toy copies. Nearly every small boy has at least one toy pistol, gun or wooden sword. I have three sons. When my older boys were growing, I did not think seriously about the issue of toy weapons – I did not buy them specifically for my children, but guns somehow got into our house (someone gave them to play, someone gave them as a gift). At some point, I realized that we already got a whole stock of various toy weapons – pistols, machine guns, rifles, swords, daggers. After that, I started working on the project.
Some parents try to protect their children from toy weapons, arguing that there is no need to bring up aggression in a child. Others, on the contrary, encourage games of war, referring to the fact that a boy needs to be raised a real man, he must feel strong in order to protect his loved ones, his family and country.
I found the subjects of these photographs on the Internet, inviting children to pose with their favorite toy weapons. I gave them complete freedom: what toy to choose, what pose to take. Did these images turn out aggressive and belligerent? Or do we find them sweet, since for us this is only a game?”
Editor’s comment: This is a powerful exploration of gun culture in America, in which Maria invites children to pose with toy weapons. It raises important questions around violence, self-preservation, and what our children experience and absorb from a very young age. Laying against this table, Maria’s subject holds an expression that belies her years. It feels sinister and troublesome, even though the guns she holds are clearly toys.
IMAGE COURTESY OF SUSAN BOROWITZ
www.susanborowitzphoto.com / @stuffdog2
From the series Locked-In – “A reference to ‘Locked In Syndrome’, this series explores the phenomenon of feeling stuck and the accompanying sense of failure to control the forces that seem to dictate our lives. Using metaphor and imagery that suggest the inability to move on, the series evokes the absence of agency and a perceived futility of each waking day. The choice to use self-portraiture reflects not only a personal journey, but also a common experience of women who feel consciously aware of what they should pursue or speak up about, but feel impotent in the face of a dominant power: unequal relationships, demons residing in the subconscious, societal expectations and especially the disappearance of relevancy with encroaching age.”
Editor’s comment: Based on ideas about loss of control and personal autonomy, Susan presents an arresting scene, with this lone figure trapped on a rocky sea outcrop, only visible on close inspection. Alone in a seemingly infinite sea, it provokes practical questions as to how the scene was constructed, as well as eloquently evoking that idea of being imprisoned in one’s personal cage. It’s very well done.
