Feature Shoot |
- A Glimpse Into the Lives of Children Homeschooled in Upstate New York
- John MacLean Pays Homage to His Favorite Artists by Photographing their Hometowns All Over the World
- Behold the Beauty of Vitiligo
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Posted: 30 Sep 2015 05:00 AM PDT
 Hula Hoop, 2012  Morgan as Thor, 2011 Berlin-based photographer Rachel Papo’s latest project focuses on the everyday lives of homeschooled children in the Catskills of Upstate New York. As homeschooling rises in popularity, Papo’s series seeks to document this emerging counterculture and to explore objectively what it means to grow up beyond the classroom walls. Being a mother herself and new to the idea of homeschooling, Papo was compelled to probe the subject deeper. In her series entitled Homeschooled, Papo’s unobtrusive photographic style lures the viewer into the children’s ethereal, dreamlike worlds, and ultimately what shines through the finished project is the free, fragile spirit of childhood: kids skate on a frozen lake; a boy hurls a saucer of ice into the sky; a girl dressed as Thor squats underneath a tree, engulfed by firs and ivory blankets of snow. We see cosy domesticity and entire forests that seem to belong only to the kids. Yet while her images make it easy to see the appeal of this lifestyle, Papo makes it clear that she maintains a neutral standpoint throughout her approach to this controversial subject.  Roan With Kilda and April, 2011 Firstly, what were your motivations and intentions behind this project? “Before I moved to Woodstock, New York with my husband and 5-month-old daughter in 2010, I had never heard about homeschooling. So when I met a mother who introduced me to her 5-year-old daughter who is homeschooled, I was intrigued and decided to explore the topic photographically. The idea was to create a series of portraits of a variety of homeschooled children in the area and discover a possible commonality between them. However, as I met more children and families, two things became very clear to me which directed the evolution of the project: The children were all so different than one another in so many ways that a common thread was impossible to detect, and—after photographing one child, I just wanted to spend more and more time with them.”  Iris And Roan On Ice, 2012  True Throwing Ball, 2011 What are your own thoughts on homeschooling? Do you feel that this project altered your perceptions or attitudes towards it? “I approached this project thinking homeschooling was a strange phenomenon, and I was excited to investigate this new way of life photographically. Only after doing some research did I discover the “movement” aspect of the practice and the great controversy it evoked. After photographing these children for two years, I still didn’t have a concrete opinion about the topic. I guess this is the essence of my project, and, in a way, of my previous projects, particularly the one about Israeli female soldiers — though the subject matter I am documenting is controversial, my images tend to stay neutral, telling a story of the individuals who are at the center of the argument. I am hoping to make people realize that, putting their stereotypes and judgements aside, children are children, no matter where it is in the world.”  Roan and Wes Out Hunting, 2013  Jake as Gregory, 2013 In this series, you focus your lens exclusively on the children. Was there a reason for leaving the parents absent from the pictures? “Right from the beginning I was only interested in the children. I wanted to attempt and reveal their spirit and what it really meant to grow up outside of the four classroom walls. I followed them around and let them do what they do and I took pictures of that. Some images show the parents but they are only accompanying the children. In most cases, I felt that including the parents would take away from the purity of the children. I was hoping that having the attention focused on the children, the viewers could perhaps isolate their own preconceptions about the subject.”  Hail Mary Full of Grace, 2011  On The Sinking Bridge, 2011 Altogether you spent two years photographing these families. How did you get the families to agree to be photographed? “I approached each family in a very straight-forward and respectful manner and showed them my previous photo projects. The parents I met were all very proud of the path they have chosen and were excited about it being documented. After they realized that my approach was neutral, and that I was not judging their choices, they let me into their lives. The fact that in my previous projects I was allowed access to Israeli army bases and to a restricted Russian ballet academy may have also contributed to their trust in me.”  True With Necklace, 2012  True In Snow, 2012 Your photographs have an almost magical, fairy-tale quality to them. What camera did you use, and what lighting effects were used – if any? “I used a digital SLR camera (Canon 5D MarkII) and 100% natural light. I am always guided by light and colour, sometimes even more than by the subject matter. With this project, since I was in direct contact with the families, I had more freedom than in the past in choosing the suitable atmosphere for the shoot. If I was shooting outdoors, I hoped for a cloudy day, even in the summer. I would then spend a few hours with my subjects, sometimes a whole day (and sometimes two days, as in the summer photos of Iris and Roan), in order to have as much control as possible in selecting the ideal hour, weather and setting. I don’t usually plan what I want my photos to look like, yet somehow, even if I try to create something new, my photos all end up having a similar aesthetic atmosphere. I guess you can call it my photographic style… I feel that in my editing process I end up pulling out those images that evoke a strong and familiar emotion in me. If you look at my soldiers, my dancers and my homeschooled images, it is not difficult to conclude that they were all shot by the same person.”  Piano Lesson, 2012  Iris’ Book, 2012  Snickerdoodle Cookies, 2012  Iris, 2011 Lastly, what is your favourite photograph from this project and why? “My favourite photograph has always been ‘Snickerdoodle Cookies, 2012′ (one of the only vertical photos in the series, of Iris preparing cookies and looking away). I think it’s my favourite mainly for aesthetic reasons. My undergraduate degree was in painting and that has had a great influence on my compositions and colour sensitivity. Together with my other major artistic influence, film, this image seems to reference both.”  Dinner Time, 2012  Roan With The Outhouse Guestbook, 2012 Click here to support Papo’s photobook Homeschooled via her Kickstarter campaign, which if successful will go into print in spring 2016. The book will feature 70 colour photographs alongside quotes from parents on why they’ve chosen this route. Keep watch on Papo’s Instagram for limited-time print offers.  Dad Mom Iris Roan, 2011  Maggie in Her Room, 2013  True’s Window, 2012  Three Weeks After Roscoe Went to Sleep, 2013 All images © Rachel Papo The post A Glimpse Into the Lives of Children Homeschooled in Upstate New York appeared first onFeature Shoot.  |
John MacLean Pays Homage to His Favorite Artists by Photographing their Hometowns All Over the World
Posted: 30 Sep 2015 05:00 AM PDT
 Hometown of William Eggleston, Sumner, Mississippi  Hometown of Robert Cumming, Mattapan, Massachusetts For Hometowns, London-based photographer John MacLean traces the origins of his most beloved artists by visiting the neighborhoods in which they were raised. Traveling across the globe, from William Eggleston’s Sumner, Mississippi to Wassily Kandisky’s Moscow, he injects each homestead with the aesthetic tenors of the artists themselves, imagining each not only as it stands today but also how it must have stood years ago, when seen through the young eyes of those children who would grow up to become his heroes. For MacLean, these artists have become more than names in a textbook; he’s researched their beginnings, their influences, and their personal revelations. In turn, they have become what he touchingly calls his “mentors-by-proxy,” tutors whom he may never have met but who nonetheless have helped him to hone and focus his own creative impulses. Influence, suggests the photographer, is both inevitable and delicious; although each new artist develops her or her own signature, we all begin at the point where our forbearers left off. With the artists revisited in Hometowns, MacLean embarks on a visual conversation wherein their voices collide with and contend with his own. Each place is seen through the prism and style of artist that came out of it, but the photographer isn’t transcribing word-for-word what’s come before. Instead, he injects his own voice, steps back and echoes his predecessors, and joins in once more. It’s a precarious dance that honors the past without plagiarizing it; here, the act of mimesis paradoxically becomes a way of asserting an artistic otherness. Although the photographer engages with each artist one-on-one, Hometowns when taken as a whole is a deeply intimate portrait of one person: its creator. Through mapping the geographical beginnings of his would-be progenitors, MacLean ultimately charts his own artistic beginnings, and somewhere between the well-trodden grounds of Mexico City and London, Washington and Oxford, we find something new. To purchase MacLean’s books, please visit his bookstore.  Hometown of Lee Friedlander, Aberdeen, Washington  Hometown of Bridget Riley, Padstow, Cornwall  Hometown of Ed Ruscha, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma  Hometown of Gabriel Orozco, San Angel, Mexico City  Hometown of James Turrell, Pasadena, California  Hometown of John Baldessari, National City, California  Hometown of John Gossage, Staten Island, New York  Hometown of Keith Arnatt, Oxford, Oxfordshire  Hometown of Lewis Baltz, Newport Beach, California  Hometown of Peter Fraser, Pontyclun, Rhondda Cynon Taf  Hometown of Rachel Whiteread, Muswell Hill, London  Hometown of Wassily Kandinsky, Khamovniki, Moscow All images © John MacLean The post John MacLean Pays Homage to His Favorite Artists by Photographing their Hometowns All Over the World appeared first on Feature Shoot.  |
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Posted: 29 Sep 2015 07:00 AM PDT
 Ticya  Jade Warsaw-based photographer Julia Kaczorowska first developed spots of white on the skin around her knees and elbows at the age of four when she was celebrating the holidays. She, like one to two percent of the world’s population, has vitiligo, a condition by which the flesh loses its pigment in certain areas. As a child, the photographer was rarely made to feel self-conscious for her skin, but in adolescence, she found herself hiding her patches; at the beach, she says, she shielded her legs from view. As an adult, Kaczorowska has learned not only to accept but also to treasure her white spots, to see them not as blemishes but as a kind of ornamentation. WZORY, which in Polish means both “designs” and “role model,” is her chronicle of and tribute to people with vitiligo, who despite the stigma that surrounds the condition, choose to bare all. Although she experimented early on with products that mask vitiligo, Kaczorowska says she’s learned with time that her skin is a part of her body and a part of who she is. Her spots aren’t symptoms of a contagious disease, as some people initially assume, but rather a perfectly natural lack of pigmentation. Sadly, the photographer understands that although the global community is becoming more accepting of vitiligo—American model Winnie Harlowe, for instance, has skyrocketed to stardom in part because of her beautifully patterned skin—there is still a sense of shame that comes with ignorant attitudes towards the condition. In India, the condition is called “white leprosy,” and women with vitiligo have hard time finding husbands; in Tanzania, says Kaczorowska, limbs showing a lack of pigmentation are thought to hold magical abilities and are sometimes amputated. WZORY is about role models who hope to inspire those struggling to understand or to embrace vitiligo. The photographer hopes that people with the condition might see it as an asset rather than a curse; while Harlowe was once mocked and berated, she’s now considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. Throughout the process of finding sitters, Kaczorowska discovered an international network of supporters and people living with vitiligo communicating through social media. She met people from Poland and all around the world, from the UK, USA, France, Belarus, and Pakistan; she was bombarded by notes from people hoping to be photographed. She traveled to Paris to meet up with people living there as well as those visiting from the Caribbean, the Ivory Coast, and other parts of Europe. The process of making these portraits has changed the way some of Kaczorowska’s subjects view their own bodies; one sitter, she says, has stopped concealing her patches with heavy clothing and instead proudly bears her spots in public. The photographer also receives letters from women who feel encouraged by her work to wear bathing suits in summer, rather than covering up. One little girl whom she photographed now attends camp and confidently explains vitiligo to the other kids when they notice her skin. Today, Kaczorowska describes people with vitiligo as “one big tribe,” regardless of sex, age, race, or country of origin. If her images make it so that one less person will avoid shaking hands with a person with vitiligo, she suggests, she will have succeeded.  Rachel  Lucasz A  Zuzia  Anasthasia  Lucasz S  Ania W  Ja All images © Julia Kaczorowska The post Behold the Beauty of Vitiligo appeared first on Feature Shoot. |
