So, I just discovered Aesthetica, a gorgeous “Art & Culture Magazine” from the UK. It was this stunning story, in Issue 51, about American photographer Garry Winogrand {1928-1984} that got me! He spent the 1960’s capturing beautiful moments in everyday American life  – from the rich and famous, to the average stranger on the street {… if you’re as captivated by these images as I am, you can see this work in person at SFMOMA until June 2, 2013}. Now, as fantastic as these spreads are, Aesthetica is not just about black and white vintage retrospectives, oh no! It’s also full of glossy, contemporary pages as well…

Yes! Enter the work of Montreal based fashion/editorial photographers, MarquisMontes, aka Jose Enrique Montes Hernandez and Valérie Boulet, partners in work and in life. Quite a contrast to the work of Garry Winogrand, but it all finds a perfect home in this issue. Gor.Ge. Ous.

You might recognize this as the work of Chilean artist Jose Romussi…

Gorgeous, yes? I’ve gushed over his Dancer series, as have countless other bloggers, and pinners, and tweeters… BUT… it was only recently that I saw these pieces:

Embroidery, and sewing machine on photographs, from a series titled String Figures. Oh my word, I love them so, so much… especially the message being “held” in that first piece. Kinda makes you want to just exhale, and let a few “mistakes” happen.

You can’t help but wonder who might live in these trailers – some with so much care put into them, and others, well not so much. All of these {and there are plenty more} are part of a series called Trailers Collected, by American photographer Nan Brown. They are iconic, and flat, but at the same time, have so much detail and personality… kinda makes me want to live in a trailer with a tiny garden, and a wolf flag in the window.

So, you know how I love writing about hyper-real paintings that look like photographs, right? Well, this time, they’re actually photographs… that kind of look like hyper-real paintings! Brooklyn based photographer Bobby Doherty has a portfolio full of amazing work {that looks nothing like these photographs}, but I totally found myself pulling out the shots that looked like simple, perfect, paintings. Go figure.

{via Booooooom}

Gor. Ge. Ous.

When I first saw this collaborative work, by Britt Bass and Morgan Blake, I thought “Oh, ok, so Britt painted over top of Morgan‘s photos. Nice.” … but wait, that’s not quite right. Morgan’s photos are actually printed on transparencies, and then laid over Britt’s painted canvas. I realize the effect is similar, but I kind of love this “reverse” way of doing it. There’s a lot less control, because what’s underneath is already underneath. An exciting surprise to see what shows through!

{ps. All of these prints under $45… framed! Yep, you better go get one right this very minute!}

Gasp! I love these, very, very, very much. All of these dreamy images are from a series, titled “Flying Houses”, by French photographer Laurent Chéhère. {If you happened to be in Paris last fall, you might have seen them on display at Galerie Paris-Beijing – I wish I had been in Paris to see these last fall!} Laurent is an award-winning advertising photographer, who left it all behind to travel the world and pursue his personal work – pulling up roots, and flying off to see the world… hm.

{via Colossal}

Wow. Stunning, detailed, beautifully-executed beadwork over portraits, photographed by Alfred Cheney Johnston, of actresses from the 20′s and 30′s. Latvian bead-artist Binka Rigava was recently commissioned to create these pieces for the newly remodeled restaurant & bar at at Hotel Monteleone, in New Orleans’ historic French quarter. I got an email yesterday from a restaurant/hotel designer named Ashley Wilkins, who in partnership Lindsay Broad, {both of whom work at Puccini Group in San Francisco} were the amazing team on this project. They wanted to “commission art that would speak to the mystery and golden age of the hotel”… luckily, they found Binka’s work on Etsy, and the rest is history!

{Speaking of history: Hotel Monteleone is a Literary and Historic landmark. The hotel has been open since before the 1930′s and has been written about in novels from authors like Hemingway,  Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and many more. The carousel in the bar is existing and has been there for over 70 years. The carousel even slowly spins completing a full circle once every 15 minutes.}

Have a look:

Gorgeous.

I absolutely love this series by American artist Evie Woltil Richner. Feathery, delicate drawings lovingly applied to old, family photos – memorializing those who are no longer with us. I would try to explain further, but Evie’s words are so much more powerful:

“…Each of these pieces is a burial, but also a memorial. Working from photographs of deceased relatives, I am physically burying them in a shroud of drawn feathers. Through burial, we acknowledge loss. The person is removed from our lives.
My Grammy, as I always called her, moved in with us when I was in elementary school. She had Alzheimer’s disease and we took care of her. Over time, I could see her memory disappearing. She would forget who people were and repeat the same stories and phrases over and over. She lives now only in my memory and in the memories of those who knew her, but my memories are wispy, like bits of dreams a few hours after you’ve had them. Some of the memories are barely there. I can see only a sliver of them. Afraid of the erosion of my own memory, my creations are also an act of remembrance – remembering my Grammy as she was when she lived with us, and also reconstructing who she might have been before I knew her. Through the ritual of drawing over images of her, I return to thoughts of her again and again.
When finished, the pieces become a signifier, like a gravestone, of a person who once was, and just as gravestones serve to connect us with a loved one after they’ve passed, these pieces are a physical connection I have to her. The feathers specifically reference the cross-cultural symbolism of the bird as a connection between heaven and earth.”

Beautifully said… and beautifully executed.

Found images, AND thread? Oh, be still my beating heart! California based artist Lisa Kokin is killing me with this work. Here are Lisa’s words about these images, from her Sewn Found Photos series:

Sometimes there are inscriptions on the back (“Susie, 7 years old”) but more often they come to me stripped of all identity. I sit in my studio and speculate about the nature of the photographed people’s lives. I will, of course, never know the truth, so I feel it is my job to give them new lives and rescue them from the obscurity they would be headed for were it not for me, humble servant of the arts. I try to invent an altogether different identity for them but of course, in the final analysis these works are more about me than any of the hundreds of anonymous individuals who appear in my work.

I am intrigued with other people’s photographic recording of their lives both for the generic quality they possess — the family and social rituals, studio portraits, vacation shots — and for the feeling of sadness and nostalgia that acquiring other people’s memories provokes in me. I feel somehow that it should be illegal to own them, yet since they are for sale it might as well be me who buys them.

… and this is literally only a fraction of her portfolio. Just wait til you see what she does with old books!

{I found the first image in the post on Pinterest, via Artsy Forager}

So here’s the thing… I don’t speak Spanish. However, María Revuelta and Núria del Moral, the girls behind the Barcelona based photography studio Las Coleccionistas, do. All of this to say, I love the images from this project titled Meals {perhaps because all I’ve done for the past three days is eat!}, but I really have no idea what it’s about. So I used Google Translate, and this is what I got…

Meals – Exaltation of the pleasures that produces the experience of eating. Editorial fashion in collaboration with stylists barcelonaUnnaked . Posted Pashion Magazine (Middle East), Luxsure Magazine (France) and Spot Magazine (Mexico).

Hm. Well there you go.