BEAUTY: Photography--Tye Martinez

In his header description on his Instagram account, photographer Tye Martinez says, "I do not document reality." Which is precisely why I am responding in a very personal way to his imagery of people floating and flying...you see, at least a few nights a week, I dream I am flying or floating in a variety of places and situations. These images feel so familiar to me. Sometimes I can float up and move forward in an upright position, sometimes I sort of "swim" through the air horizontally, sometimes I can leap and fly along many yards before coming back down to push off again. I love seeing Martinez make his models do the same thing.

https://tyedied.rip/

BEAUTY: Post-Photography--André Sanchez

For Halloween, here are a dozen gorgeous Vanitas images (a vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death) made by Parisian photographer and artist André Sanchez.

http://www.sanchezandre.com/

BEAUTY: Post-Photography--André Sanchez

I love this beautiful post-photographic (collage) series of the signs of the zodiac by Paris-based photographer and artist André Sanchez. Sometimes collage-based art can be a bit helter-skelter, but these hang together beautifully.

http://www.sanchezandre.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Oleg Dou

The smooth bodies and blurred gender impressions of the images in Oleg Dou's Heaven In My Body series is evocative and provocative...

Take a look at Dou's fascinating approach and process (he uses Photoshop to achieve this smooth, otherworldly effect) in this charming video:

Top to bottom: 9 Tears; Flora; Narcissus In Love; Narcissus; Pet; Vampire Ballet

http://olegdou.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Ingrid Baars

The fine art photography of Ingrid Baars'  l'Afrique series focuses on the iconic beauty of images of women from ancient Africa. I love how Baars takes photographs of women but morphs them into carved African heads and masks, the kind that inspired Cubist artists in the early twentieth century, or mystical goddesses. Some remind me of the marvelous work that Jean-Paul Goude was doing with Grace Jones in the 80s.

http://ingridbaars.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Geebird & Bamby

The photographic duo of Geebird & Bamby (Robert G. Achtel and Jens Bambauer) was initiated in 2009 with the primary objective to create, manufacture and distribute "The New World," a photographic series they refer to as an original visual design product. It is based on the partnership's architectural photography from California, Nevada, and Florida.

The Artists' Statement about the series:
"'The New World' revisits anonymous places of the 20th century. It is set in a time characterized by the conflict of Modernist and Postmodernist convictions, its influence on later 20th century history, and ultimately, the world we live in today.

On a formal level, this conflict defines the aesthetics of the collection. The interrelation of rational graphic design and anonymous photorealism reflects the contrast of manmade ideals and the acceptance of life in chaos. 'The New World' is shaped by an original set of rules, metrics and processes. This enables the revelation of eclectic utopias that, for better or worse, withhold the definition of a photograph."

I've seen so many of these monolithic, Brutalist/Mid-Century store fronts in both Florida and California and they really do represent a certain cultural idea from a certain period. The emptiness here seems to speak to the failed state of that idea and period.

http://store.geebirdandbamby.com/