By chance, I was fortunate enough to come across the photography of Alin Mocanu, whose wedding pictures stand out in their capacity to evoke the poetry of commitment. Alin Mocanu’s images are synecdoches (small yet significant fragments) in picture form that capture the hope, the innocence and the beauty of our dreams of love when we first embark upon a lifelong commitment and promise to love and cherish each other for life. Alin’s photography, which you can view on his website below, brought out the poet in me.
Italian photographer Luigi Fieni brings us the best in photojournalism. Although Luigi began his career as an aeronautical engineer, since 1999 he has chosen a different, artistic, path. For nearly fifteen years, he has been a master conservationist of wall paintings, wood carvings and sculptures in Nepal. He also passes on his craft by leading a training program in Lomanthang, the capital of Mutang.
Versatile and international, Fieni also restores some of the most majestic monuments in Europe. He has helped restore Basilica dei Santi Ambrogio e Carlo al Corso, Church of San Pietro Apostolo in Poli, Church of Santo Stefano in Poli, and the Civic Archaeological Museum of Albano Laziale among others.
The deep knowledge and respect for cultures throughout the ages and across the globe that Fieni exhibits in his restoration projects also shines through in his breathtaking photojournalism. A poet with images, Luigi also has a way with words. The presentation of photography, restoration projects and background on his website, below, is in itself a work of art, combining beautiful images, soothing music and his own poetic eloquence.
Like the Impressionists, Luigi explores the relation between light, meaning and meditation. He states on his website, “Using cameras, in all their forms, fascinates me. Mesmerized by the noise of the shutter I am granted sorcery… I am enthralled by the diversity and am always looking to capture a moment rather than an image.”
Fieni experiments artistically with the format, focus and angle of the camera to produce images that capture motion, beauty, emotion, energy and yet, somehow, also remain faithful to the scenery or people they portray. There’s a sense of reverence that pervades Fieni’s images that may have something to do with his years of experience with the restoration of cultural artifacts. But it has even more to do with his modesty and appreciation for world cultures and, above all, for his fellow human beings.
“In a way,” Luigi explains, “the light entering through the lens does not just alter some silver grains or some pixels but it carries all the vibrations, all the emotions in one evocative moment.” In our regular lives, filled with the routines of work, familial responsibilities, or even mindless diversions, it’s easy to bypass a deeper, almost spiritual, appreciation for life in all its kaleidoscope of emotions, forms and colors. Luigi Fieni’s spectacular photorealism represents not only the best of this arform, but also a form of meditation through art.
Objects can speak to us. Presented in the right way, and in the right light, they can even move us. A lonely bridge, a desolate house can be haunting images in themselves. Sometimes such images can reach into our minds to stir our most cherished memories. Thematic photography has deeply expressive powers. Like Marcel Proust’s madelaine, they evoke scenes and lived experiences that mattered to us in the past and that still resonate in the present.
Port of Baltimore by Todd Materazzi
Todd Materazzi is an award-winning thematic photographer. Masterfully captured, haunting and sometimes even eerie, his city scenes and country landscapes evoke our emotions. Materazzi aptly calls his images “emotional transformation through thematic photography.” In the first image of the series Port of Baltimore, (above) the perspective is geometric, simple, even stark. Parallel train tracks engulfed by darkness eventually unite, through an optical illusion, in the distant horizon. Where they meet we encounter the focal point of the image: several small spheres of light. This painting evokes the theme of voyage while also giving the impression that no matter how dark the pursuit there is, both literally and figuratively, a light at the end of the journey.
Image by Todd Materazzi
The warmer hues of the second image in the series Port of Baltimore (above) shines through the darkness of the night with the bright lights on the horizon that frame the sharply delineated bridge. They also offer a counterpoint to the reflecting surface of the shimmery water which embraces our field of vision. The rundown bridge in the foreground seems overpowered by the triumphant bridge in the background, crowned by its hallow of lights.
Baltimore by Todd Materazzi
The city scene above, however, has a more intimate, human touch as father and son find solace from the rain inside a department store. There’s complicity, affection (as the father protects under his umbrella the tiny figure of the son) and an adorable sense of mirroring, as the bigger Me and little me, reflect one another in the similarly dressed figures of father and son.
Materazzi’s stark images capture desolate urban scenes and gorgeous landscapes that straddle the delicate line between abstract, geometric lines and curves and highly expressive landscapes that many of us have encountered and that remain all the more memorable when captured with talent and depth by Todd Materazzi’s emotive thematic photography. For more information, take a look at the artist’s website, on the link: http://titaniumphoto.wordpress.com/
Leonardo Pereznieto is, along with me, the co-founder of the contemporary art movement postromanticism. He lives in Mexico and comes from an artistic family: his mother is a musician and his father was a well-known artist. He has won the Mozart Prize for the Arts for his sculpture, which epitomizes the ideals of postromanticism: an incredible life-like quality which is nevertheless full of imagination and fancy; a delicate sensual touch; a passionate sense of the spirituality of earthly existence.
On January 12th, 2012, Leonardo Pereznieto exhibited some of his works at the Able Fine Art Gallery, in New York City, alongside other notable international artists: Tanya Kazakowitz, Kim Wan, Steve Hickok, Kim Wan, Oh Se-Chul, Kim Ji-Young and Park Ju-Hyun. The opening reception was lively, with hundreds of art lovers in attendance. Laura Ramirez, the Associate Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in New York, participated at the opening, representing the Mexican Consulate. The artist John Wellington, the sculptor Cynthia Eardley, the actress Suzi Lorraine, playwright and the director Micheal Simon Hall also attended the show.
Leonardo Pereznieto has exhibited his work in many prominent galleries throughout the world, including Paris, Florence, London, Montecarlo, Frankfurt, Seoul, New York, Los Angeles, and Mexico City and has delivered over 50 lectures including at the New York Academy of Art, the University of Michigan and at the Celebrity Centre Florence, Italy. Among other honors and prizes, he has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Italy Award for Visual Arts; Premio Firenze (sculpture); the Mozart Prize for the Arts (sculpture), Nice, France and the award at the International Art Festival, New York, NY (sculpture).
Aside from his devotion to art, the artist has also dedicated a large part of his life to humanitarian causes. He is the Director of Visual Arts for the non-profit organization Artists and Runners for Human Rights Mexico, which has the purpose of raising people’s awareness about the UN´s Universal Declaration for Human Rights. Believing that art should also contribute to worthwhile social goals, Leonardo has dedicated the sculpture featured above, entitled The Scream, to the protection of human rights.
We’ve all seen Evard Munch’s Expressionist painting, The Scream (1893). The frantic colors, the skeletal shape of the man on the bridge, his gaping mouth, all suggest angst. This painting might as well be a symbol for the horrors humanity suffered after the artist died: the Stalinist purges, the Holocaust. How do you capture the human capacity for evil and senseless violence through sculpture?
Leonardo Pereznieto manages to do it eloquently in his version of The Scream. This sculpture features a man who resembles in some way Munch’s figure on the bridge: his gaping mouth voices a silent scream, while the lines on his face suggest hopeless anguish. His face is slanted upward, as if appealing for an explanation to the divine. We can’t tell if he finds any solace in faith. But we see quite clearly the source of his anguish: the beautiful woman he has lost, who lies languidly in his arms. Her lifeless shape is now free of pain. His rage contrasts with her endless repose. Together they form a symbol of the innocence and outrage of senseless human suffering.
Jeff Cornell was born and raised in Connecticut. He studied at the Paier School of Art in Hamden. He is a nationally acclaimed artist who specializes in figure painting. His delicate drawings and pastels of the female form capture not only beauty, but also moments of contemplation and tranquility suspended in time and far removed from worldly problems. He exhibits his paintings in galleries throughout the country.
“The female form is of arresting beauty; there is no other thing I would care as much to portray through my work,” states Jeff Cornell, describing the main inspiration for his art. And, certainly, his appreciation for feminine beauty shows in every contour, every line. What is perhaps more unique and surprising, however, is how fully Cornell can convey the mood of feminine serenity, contemplation and sensuality with so little use of color, such delicate texture and such an economy of lines.
“I want my work to speak to every person who views it, but it is important to me that the message be whispered rather than shouted,” the artist states. His message is certainly whispered, if not softly sung.
With very little use of shading, his paintings show rounded, sinuous forms, volume. With very little use of color, they show vibrancy, emotion. With an economy of lines, they reach a level of astonishing realism, but only through suggestion. With almost no texture, they are nonetheless palpable. And with very little narrative structure, they hint at movement, thought, feeling and action.
Jeff Cornell’s art is perhaps the most difficult of all: the art of understatement. The art of suggesting human subjectivity—unexpressed thoughts, subcurrents of emotions and hidden desires—rather than displaying them dramatically on the canvas.
