Noah Kalina - Figure studies

Noah Kalina is an American photographer (from Brooklyn), that offers a very strange imagery, based on apparently simple pictures but always mediating something unsane and sick in it. Not that it seems a voluntary will from her, but since it's in all her portraits, it must be somewhat expected. Here not a very representative series from her, entitled Figure studies but that actually is based on young women alone in what seem hotel rooms, and where you feel that one moment or another they will offer themselves some pleasure. An impression of heavy and tired loneliness, these moments where life could stop you wouldn't care a lot after all, if you could go on a little orgasmic spasm. But this is my own interpretation of these images, influenced by my tonight state of mind and after all I'm maybe totally wrong. Her site here (link goes on the whole set of this series). Thanks to her for providing the pictures in a high quality format and for not using any tool to prevent downloading them. In 2 and half years of Scoptophilia, she's one of the rares to do it and she must be deeply thanked for that. And the other ones blamed whatever is their usual shitload of reasons.

Susannah B. - Childhood and adolescence

Susannah B. is a young photographer, probably from Ireland but I'm not sure, quite prolific, and although I do not appreciate a lot of her work (she should be a little more demanding and less self-indulgent I think), she sometimes succeeds in showing something of the moral pain and anguish of female childhood and adolescence. Here a selection of pictures I really find impressive and moving, some about child abuse, others about social oppression at school, others about the childhood-adolescence passage. Her flickr  site here.

Francesca Woodman - More works

A second post on Francesca Woodman (previous here). You won't learn anything if I tell you this is one of the greatest artist/photographer of last century, and surely one of the most influential on today's photography. Died young (she killed herself in 1981, at 23), these images don't stop to question and fascinate us with their extraordinary mix of ghostly weirdness and realistic intimacy. I don't know why but when I think of Francesca Woodman, I think of Frida Kahlo, maybe this self-affirmation that paved the way for a true equality between men and women concerning art. A selection but I'm sure I'll post a 3rd one in a future (if I'm still alive to do it of course).

Roger Mayne - Children of Southam Street

Roger Mayne is one of the greatest naturalistic photographer of history and his pictures of children playing in the streets of England in the late 50's are among the most moving and emotive images you'll ever see in your life (at least in mine). Innocence in poverty has never found a better representation than here. And don't talk to me about French or US equivalents, they never produced something with the semantic richness of these images. They had all a sort of distanciation that you don't find here, where everything is empathy. Born in 1929, he pursued his work until recently but nothing for me that reached the level of these children portraits. A site here.

Tom Hunter - Various works

Tom Hunter is a UK born photographer (in 1965) quite notorious now. His pictures do not deal with what is usually my focused thema, I mean the body, but, much similar to Gregory Crewdson, placing his models in some environments, he tells something about the place of our body in the world. He uses old painting masters (Vermeer, Millais) as sources of influence in making their scenography contempory with unknown and often modest persons, showing how beauty and emotion can raise from anybody's life. In brief, it's an importante modern creator although he may be a little mainstream and honoured for my own taste. His site here.