Video for the weekend 37 / Tod Papageorge

Landscape 15

Bilbao, Spain 2009.

PHOTO OF THE MONTH / February 2010

Wetteren, Belgium 2009.

Days of Lightness 29

Knokke, Belgium 2010.

Definable Obscurity 8 / Subtle Movements

Photographers to know / Link 18 : Alex Prager

Wendy – Week-End 2010, photographed by Alex Prager.

Alex Prager, a 29-year old photographer grew up between Los Angeles and Switzerland, her work reflecting the unreal reality of the influence of a cinematic childhood. After experiencing an exhibition by William Eggleston, this self-taught photographer never looked back.

Inspired by the high drama of classic movies—which, despite their theatricality, touch upon genuine emotions of alienation, fear, anger, longing, and lust—Prager's images seem at first to be all exquisite surface. However the girls of this series—named “Barbara,” “Jane,” “Lois” and other such conventional and slightly old-fashioned monikers—conceal pain beneath their lipstick-lined smiles and dead eyes. Informed largely by Los Angeles, with its perpetual blue skies and birds singing from imported palm trees, Prager’s work exudes an underlying sense of the eerie monotony and unease that can permeate beneath the surface of beauty and the promise of happiness.

Annie – The Big Valley 2008, photographed by Alex Prager

In the artist's own words, she is “documenting a world that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.” The trilogy began with girls playing archetypal roles in Polyester. Then in The Big Valley, the roles took on lives of their own, and the separation between make-believe and real life began to dissolve. With Week-end, which signifies the peak as well as the extent of the period, the façade becomes so thick that the illusion is now more real than the world they actually live in.

After the release of her first book The Book Of Disquiet (2005) Prager was given her first solo show at Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA entitled "Polyester", which was covered by the Los Angeles Times. Along with her 2008 exhibition at The Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, Prager is slated to exhibit in New York in 2009.

"Her photographs reveal a keen eye for the shining and the bizarre, a bit Annie Leibovitz, a bit Diane Arbus."- The Los Angeles Times

Alex Prager continues to live and work in the Los Angeles area.

Eve – The Big Valley 2008, photographed by Alex Prager

The truth/untruth about photography 34

Brussel, Belgium 2008.

Video for the weekend 36 / David Solomons

Behind 28 / Selected for exhibition

Selected work for the exhibition at the International Photofestival, Knokke-Heist, Belgium from 28.03.2010 till 13.06.2010.

BETTER THAN A ROLLER COASTER / BLACKPOOL, UK 2007.

BEFORE HER WHITE FRONT DOOR / WETTEREN, BELGIUM 2009.

Report 67 / Streets of Dublin 3

Dublin, Ireland 2009.

Unlabeled 14

Brussel, Belgium 2008.

PHOTO OF THE MONTH / January 2010

Santander, Spain 2009.

Sources / E. Hopper 8

Bilbao, Spain 2009.

Coincidences 19

Blankenberge, Belgium 2007.

Photographers to know / Link 17 : Michael Wolf

© Michael Wolf / The Transparant City, 2008.

In a diverse array of photographic projects Michael Wolf explores the complex cultural identities of China and Hong Kong, where he has lived since 1995. Wolf delves into subjects such as the formal and improvisational aesthetics of Hong Kong's architectural forms, the often-overlooked human presence at the heart of international industry, and the idiosyncratic ways city-dwellers shape their surroundings in an "organic metropolis." Throughout these interrelated series Wolf draws into question notions of public and private space, anonymity and individuality, history and modern development. Attuned to the cultural and economic undercurrents of his adopted home, Wolf remains humanely attentive to the personal details as well. Kenneth Baker, critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written of the "formal intelligence and acuity of observation" evident in Wolf's photographs, and while Wolf is meticulously and consistently observant, his photographs reflect a manner of working that is intuitive and fluid: from series to series Wolf assumes a range of viewpoints, intimate in some cases and removed in others, and alternates between approaches that are rigorously formal and playfully lyrical.

Michael Wolf was born in Munich (1954), Germany. He grew up in the USA and studied at UC Berkley and at the University of Essen in Germany. He has been living and working as a photographer and author in China for ten years.

© Michael Wolf / Tokyo Subway Dream, 2009.