Feature Shoot |
- Photographer Uncovers a Hotspot for Gay Cruising in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park
- Hilarious Photos of Superheroes and Villains Engaged in Life’s Most Mundane Activities
- Food, Family, Fun, and Laziness: 15 Images that Capture the True Spirit of Thanksgiving (Sponsored)
- After Coming Back From the Dead, This Photographer Created the Most Astonishing Images of the Human Body (NSFW)
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Posted: 20 Nov 2015 05:00 AM PST
  The Vale of Cashmere, in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, is a well-kept secret to many. Thomas Roma, a Brooklynite and New Yorker, was introduced to the Vale by chance. A close friend frequented the park, asking Roma – one summer day – for a ride there. The Vale is synonymous to those who know it, as a location where countless men are able to feed desire, gender, identity, race and community with other men. This is where Roma has constructed his new body of work for Steven Kasher Gallery. A body of work aptly named, In the Vale of Cashmere. Sometimes it’s not so surprising how a place, in nature, can become innately human. A photograph can characterize. It often takes an image-maker to add light, and the subtle magic of intimacy for a connective relationship. Thomas Roma conjugates the subjects of his show In the Vale of Cashmere. “There always needs to be the potential for failure, right at the surface,” he shares with me. A park goer doesn’t merely shift through the trees – nor does a photographer. Roma feels his way in the brush and with the men hidden in the Vale. Men who more often than not, declined being photographed by him. There is an interchange of fellowship kindled by the ability of the landscape. Roma’s photos are a quagmire of these affections. In the Vale of Cashmere is a dedication to Carl Spinella, the friend he dropped at the park that summer day. This friend and memory never left Roma, nor did the park. “I’m interested in changing. Change as much as possible and accepting the realities of change up ’til death. Death is a waste of time.” Through Roma’s images viewers are able to get a sense of motion and patience. Men waiting and wanting, for desire or disappointment, levels of uncertainty and scrutiny. The photos converse as a group. Uplifted roots, shapeless and almost human, confuse. A man waits off to the edge of a trail, a portrait; some men make eye contact, others don’t. Prospect Park Alliance has announced that the park is due for an overhaul, with much focus on the Vale of Cashmere. The Vale is a place of changing and staying, and the assumed stigmas of sex are only a piece of the place. Intimacy is about becoming new, a chance meeting. The depth of its description is something hard to put your finger on, but you don’t have to. The answers are in the photographs. “I want to be surprised just like everyone else,” Roma chuckles, “Real art making is dealing with something elusive.” Thomas Roma’s In the Vale of Cashmere is on view at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York through December 19th, 2015.          All images © Thomas Roma The post Photographer Uncovers a Hotspot for Gay Cruising in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park appeared first onFeature Shoot.  |
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Posted: 19 Nov 2015 09:39 AM PST
   When Ottawa-based photographer Daniel Picard goes about his daily life, he’s not only thinking about the real world; he’s thinking about the Death Star, Gotham City, and Superman’s Metropolis. For Picard, mundane rituals like riding the elevator or visiting the loo don’t have to be tedious. Instead, they’re opportunities to imagine the what superheroes and comic book villains are doing when we’re not looking.Figures & Statues, an ongoing series published as Figure Fantasy, is his investigation of the ordinary experiences that every fictional character must at some point or another have to face. Figures & Statues, suggests Picard, was born almost by accident when he used a robot to stand in for a model during a time-sensitive shoot. The result was unexpectedly beguiling, and from there, he moved on to working with more action figures and collectibles, including the lifelike creations of Sideshow Collectibles, who he put in absurd and endearing circumstances around his neighborhood. While the project began as a fun outlet for the photographer’s creative impulses, it didn’t become a serious undertaking until he was contacted by the owner of Sideshow Collectibles, who had unbeknownst to Picard, been following the various shenanigans his toys were getting into all the way in Canada. Since that fateful day, Picard and his Sideshow figures, along with a few friends from Funko POP!s and Hot Toys have traveled everywhere from the Cold War bunker Diefenbunker to an old jail in Ontario. They’ve gone south to California and are looking forward to sharing photos from their trip to the Big Apple. Next year, says the artist, they’re planning to fly overseas to Italy. Picard’s manifold Figures & Statues and their various misadventures prove not only that toys are as much for grown-ups as they are for kids but also that no matter how many powers they have, superheroes are sometimes their most fascinating when they’re just being people like the rest of us. Picard is now working on a follow-up book to Figure Fantasy, but in the meantime, the original book, published by Insight Editions, can be purchased here. Some of Picard’s images are currently on view atGalerie Sakura in Paris.             All images © Daniel Picard The post Hilarious Photos of Superheroes and Villains Engaged in Life’s Most Mundane Activities appeared first on Feature Shoot.  |
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Posted: 19 Nov 2015 08:14 AM PST
 © Noel Camardo/Vault Archives  © Peter Frank Edwards/Vault Archives Thanksgiving always has a way of reminding us what’s most important in our lives. It’s also a good excuse to leave behind the cares and worries of every other day in the year to enjoy time with family and friends. In honor of this Thanksgiving, we’re showcasing a collection of photographs from the boutique licensing agency Vault Archives. These photos take in everything from a cozy neighborhood house in Austin to a pie shop in Memphis, the harvest from a distillery in Charleston and a sit-down meal at an Oregon orchard. Vault Archives is an exclusive, high-end agency offering images to commercial, advertising, and editorial clients. With a focus on authentic imagery from international artists, Vault Archives currently holds a roster of over seventy-five phenomenal photographers, each with a keen vision and natural ability to capture unforgettable moments. Through collaboration with subagents all over the world, Vault Archives is able to reach far and wide, bringing places and people together through vivid stories and outstanding images – as you’ll see from the quality of the photos below.  © Melanie Dunea/The New York Times/Vault Archives  © Noel Camardo/Vault Archives  © Andrew Scrivani/The New York Times/Vault Archives  © Kate LeSueur/Vault Archives  © Joel Barhamand/Vault Archives  © Joel Barhamand/Vault Archives  © Alyson Aliano/Vault Archives  © Karen Pearson/Vault Archives  © Joel Barhamand/Vault Archives  © Kate LeSueur/Vault Archives  © Kate LeSueur/Vault Archives  © Peter Frank Edwards/Vault Archives  © Peter Frank Edwards/Vault Archives Vault Archives is a Feature Shoot sponsor. The post Food, Family, Fun, and Laziness: 15 Images that Capture the True Spirit of Thanksgiving (Sponsored) appeared first on Feature Shoot.  |
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Posted: 19 Nov 2015 06:53 AM PST
 Girl Alive  Picnic with Hand Tools and Hardware “Go back Lou, we’re not ready for you yet,” said a throng of hundreds as photographer Lou Krueger hovered above the grassy hill. Below him, the figures stood clothed all in beige, the rush of the ocean beside them. This dream— one the photographer can only describe as “most extraordinary, impossibly wonderful, unbelievably joyful”— came to him on the night his heart stopped, and for a brief moment, he died. Krueger is not a religious man, but his brush with death, followed by a subsequent diagnoses of and treatment for epilepsy, has instilled within him a persistent consciousness of the failings and fragilities of the human body. He recounts an adage once told to him by a friend— “the only problem with our bodies is that we have to live in them”— before divulging that his shoulder is held together with pins, his jaw with wires. His hip is replaced with a metallic alternate, and at night, his breathing is aided by a separate machine. For all the corporeal pain he’s had to endure, the photographer sees parallels in the more private, secreted thoughts that cut in and out of the human subconscious. The Temple of Wonders is a physical representation of all that cannot be uttered, a resurfacing of all things fanciful and monstrous that lay hidden within each of us. In his disfigured protagonists, Krueger illuminates the most disquieting—and paradoxically, the most precious— aspects of being mortal. Every element in the montage is shot by Krueger himself, and although he uses models, his own body emerges in the details; the staples that bridge severed flesh, for instance, were shot after he had his hip replaced. Although Krueger’s distorted and reassembled bodies certainly elicit discomfort, the golden shimmer that blankets nearly every surface allow us to find moments of reverie and exquisiteness within the peculiar. Krueger’s models and props are adorned with either spray paint or airbrush makeup, though most of the models’ bodies are painted by hand. The shooting sessions consume hours and are exhausting for everyone involved, says the photographer, but the process is in many ways a labor of love, something intimate and treasured that he shares with those who choose to take part. As for post-processing and compiling the montages, Krueger has devoted hundreds upon hundreds of hours. The images from The Temple take anywhere from three weeks to two years to complete, often requiring their creator to persist on very little sleep. When asked whether The Temple has in any way answered the questions born from his near miss with the grave, Krueger admits that he will need the rest of his days and more to uncover the truth about life and death. He does allow, however, that he no longer fears the scythe of the grim reaper.  Squirrel Man  The Human Ashtray  Of Birds, Of Bees, Of Bodies and Bones  Wired 2  Wired 3  The Gown of Eyes, Ears and Tears  The Gown of Eyes, Ears and Tears (detail) All images © Lou Krueger The post After Coming Back From the Dead, This Photographer Created the Most Astonishing Images of the Human Body (NSFW) appeared first on Feature Shoot. |
