my friend Johanna Gullin's art

my friend johanna gullin makes well cool art. these are photos from a performance she did with a dress made of leaf.









and with that i'm leaving norway and blogger for a week of italian niceness. i shall drink wine and swim in the ocean- both at the same time, while taking photos with my underwater camera!

victorian post mortem photography 2

i posted some victorian post mortem photographs yesterday, yet i wanted to post these on their own as i think they are different than those i posted yesterday. the difference is that in the others, the bodies were posed as if asleep - where as in these, the bodies are in coffins. there hasn't been any attempt of hiding what has happened. to modern eyes some of them may seem nearly surreal; we've got other references now, and a coffin reminds us of vampires and horror movies. but i guess back then, it was more an acceptance of what had happened.


i find the children in their coffins strange. some of them seem like dolls still in their packaging.

Tony

A painting I did of my friend Tony.



Oil on canvas.

a painting of mine

Oil on canvas.

body

A painting I did in college.


Oil on canvas

a painting of mine

Oil on canvas.

memory

This was an experiment of mine. It's not the style I usually go for, but I really like how it came out.



Acrylics, crackling medium, and oil on canvas.

medusa

a drawing from my sketchbook.


i wish i had lots of eyes in my hair. it would freak people out.

victorian post mortem photography

there's something unsettling about pictures of dead people, even when they are as beautiful and serene as these victorian post mortem photographs, where the dead is posed as if asleep. i bet the victorians too would have prefered to have a photo of the person while he or she was still alive, but photography was too expensive, and sometimes people died without there being a single photograph to remember them by. especially children, who had a higher mortality rate back then, was never photographed until it was too late. the moment after someone's death was the last chance to capture a memory of them, and post mortem photographs were displayed along with the normal family photographs.

















i did in fact paint some paintings ages ago with sleeping and/or dead people, inspired by victorian post mortem photography, but with a more contemporary look. i think the subject is easier for a lot of people to look at in a painting, although personally i have no problem looking at the photos; i think they're absolutely beautiful in a melancholic sort of way. i think the fact that you just can't tell if the subject IS in fact dead or if he or she is only asleep makes it interesting.

currator robert storr had a therory of the good grotesque that matches this effect; "it's like the duck/bunny trompe l'oeil, the drawing that looks like a duck at a certain angle but the bill becomes rabbit ears when it's turned on its side... is it a duck or a bunny?... they are locked and your mind keeps flashing from one to the other. good grotesques are sort of like duck/bunnies."

pretend you're human

juergen teller's models are stripped, not only of their clothes, but of all glossy unreality. not that the result is real; it's only pretending to be.

when asked if he prefers working with models or 'real people' when conducting a photo shoot, juergen answered "it changes all the time. they are all real people to me."

personally i like the rawness of realism, but i much prefer the magic of fairy tales.

i showed these photos of lily cole to my boyfriend, and he exclaimed "is that you!???". well, no, she isn't me, but i bet she pretends to be:P





björk the forever miss cool eating black spaghetti. i saw this type of spaghetti the last time i was in italy, and an image of an all black necro dinner popped into my head. juergen must have read my thoughts. i hate it when that happens.

submission and resistance

i don't know who these paintings are by, i wish i did.