Guilherme Gerais
Artist Feature
Every week an artist is featured whose single image was published by Der Greif. The Feature shows the image in the original context of the series.
Studio Likeness - Living Things
May 08, 2019
LIVING THINGS is an homage to plants.
In our practice as still life photographers we create images of the seemingly inanimate world. In classical still life paintings of table tops we see flowers, fruit and vegetables not moving, not breathing – and therefore not alive? The word „still“ itself suggests that these things and objects are steady and passive. Research shows though that plants are more active and communicative than we thought for a long time. They have ways of communicating and adapting to their surroundings very similar to animals. These two groups – plants and animals (including humans) – have been separated on a theoretical level since Aristotle. By calling them by our mutual term „Living things“ we try to erase this barrier in our minds.
The act of taking a picture is also an important topic in this series. We used the image creation process as a form of rational and aestehtical examination of our objects by flooding the plant with light, by laying it out flat on a structured surface, by printing it on paper and performing analog interventions. This process reveals the vibrancy and the fragile life of a plant, celebrating rhythm, shape and color.
Artist Blog
The blog of Der Greif is written entirely by the artists who have been invited to doing an Artist-Feature. Every week, we have a different author.
Published in:
»Guest-Room Holly Hay«
Baby Steps
May 14, 2019 - Studio Likeness
Projection is one of our favorite tools. We take a picture of a picture that we took before. This process it about repetition and transformation. By projecting an image on a surface and playing with the dimensions the motif itself starts to tell a different story.
This is an illustration on how incredibly fast our kids grow up. Each single step is small and the little humans invest all their time and energy to learn everything from scratch.
This process is also about repetition, performing the same action over and over again. But as a witness it´s sometimes hard to keep up with the speed of this development. We added time and movement to our image in an analogue way to visualize this feeling.
Not only Springtime
May 13, 2019 - Studio Likeness
Summer ist great, autumn is beautiful and winter has it´s own magic. The mystification of perfect and intact bodies has predominated the media for a long time. We notice a shift in this practice and appreciate to see a more realistic portrayal of the human body. Our sculptural illustration celebrates the beauty of imperfection.
Body Talk
May 11, 2019 - Studio Likeness
These two images have several things in common. They talk about women, they talk about their bodies, they talk about how women are willing to be uncomfortable in order to feel comfortable in their own skin. The image on the left shows a commissioned illustration for an article about vaginal plastic surgery in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, the image on the right is a personal work called Diva.
Sicily
May 10, 2019 - Studio Likeness
On a field trip to Mount Etna we placed the focus on inspiring views and details we found on our way. Paper frames served as a tool for our narrative. Looking through a frame like through a window creates space, a meaningful distance between ourselves and the scene we look at. It implies the observing view of the traveler, being there yet never belonging. At the same time the frame isolates and celebrates a specific motif in the wide landscape that´s in front of us. It was this effect that we became curious about and chose to experiment with on our trip to the volcano.
Find the whole series here
Floragraphs
May 09, 2019 - Studio Likeness
Like in a radiograph natural objects are flooded with light. Radiographs are mostly used to tell us more about the human body. By using parts of vegetables and plants we observe the vitality that the flora holds. Floragraphs shows a living thing in the focus of our camera but it also shows the transformation of something natural into pure shape and color. A flower, the peel a carrot become abstract forms while they are flooded with light. We accentuate the shape, examine the relation between density and transparency and reveal the dependency between color saturation and light. The beauty of rhythm and structure is a connectional element that every object holds. We wanted to learn more about a plant while photographing it. At the same time we illustrate what we do. Taking a photo means to put a focus on something, to give it a frame, to take a section from the hole panorama that our eyes are able to see.
