Note: Contains nudity. In an oil series tilted “8,” Canadian artist Christopher Pew paints shadowy, dystopic scenes imbued with symbolism. Inhabiting the images is a cast of ambiguous characters; stark-nude, masked, and garbed in white, they are bound together by a scarlet scarf, signifying a fidelity of blood and sacrifice in the barren lands. Moving […]
Category: Landscape
The Sound of Silence: Photography by Tyler Rayburn
American photographer Tyler Rayburn sees the beauty of isolation; disconnecting oneself from urban life for hours to reflect, introspect and see beyond. He takes singular portraits of himself and models placed in front of breathtaking canyons and endless sea cliffs—it is his way of documenting his travels and stories. He almost died in one shoot, […]
10 Contemporary Canadian Artists Who Reimagine Frontiers
Canadian art has been historically recognized for its representations of the country’s magnificent landscapes. Near the beginning of the twentieth century, the Group of Seven set out to capture Canada’s cultural spirit by painting the transcendent force of the wilderness. Their work reflects the purity, beauty, and mystery of nature—the mythos of the untameable Canadian […]
Children of the Winter Forest: Dara Scully’s Poetic Photography
Note: Contains nudity. Dara Scully is a self-professed “forest-creature, winter child” who instills poetry into her haunting photography. Scully’s works are like gothic fairytales, exploring the human psyche through complex metaphors and esoteric symbols: nude figures lie in strange constellations on the grass, ghost-eyed children peer at the viewer, and dark forests encroach on the […]
Dancing Distortion: Bodily Traces In Frederic Fontenoy’s Photography
In 1988, French photographer Frédéric Fontenoy composed “Metamorphosis,” a series of self-portraits that abstract the body within wild landscapes. Using the analog process with a panoramic camera, he moved (or, as he describes, “danced”) for 2-3 seconds before the lens, transforming his figure into overlapping traces of itself. By dissolving the human figure into a […]
Philip Ob Rey Contructs Giant, Humanoid Omens out of VHS Tape
“Humantropy” is a word coined by artist Philip Ob Rey to describe the decline of civilization in an age of renewed chaos. To explore this concept, Ob Rey constructed spectral giants made out of VHS tape and found natural objects (feathers, stones, and seaweed) and photographed them in the frozen, brooding plains of Iceland. Each […]
Mercenaries of the Apocalypse: The Art of Yuri Shwedoff
Moscow-based artist Yuri Shwedoff tells a passionate and imaginative story about survival in the apocalypse. Set in barren wastelands, his melancholic warriors wander alone, armed with medieval weapons and practicing unearthly magic. Children and animals are recurring motifs, used as symbols of sacrifice and loss in the merciless terrain. A dual sense of loneliness and […]
Dragan Ilic Di Vogo’s Symbolic, Hallucinatory Worlds
Note: Contains nudity. Dragan Ilic Di Vogo is a Belgrade-based painter who combines fantasy imagery with surrealism in passionate, dreamlike sequences. His deserts—inhabited by warrior women, stone angels, and floating objects—are reminiscent of the bizarre, symbolic landscapes of Salvador Dalí. With an ancient poeticism, Di Vogo’s works explore the edges of consciousness by dissolving the […]
Bear Kirkpatrick’s Passionate and Sacred Photography
Note: Contains nudity. Bear Kirkpatrick is a photographer who ventures deep into the wilderness, seeking “hierophanies.” The term derives from the theories of religious historian Mircea Eliade, referring to moments when the sacred realm breaks into the profane (the material, everyday world). Kirkpatrick’s portraits feature nude figures in beautiful, tortured communion with the earth. In […]
Patagonia Dreaming: The Infrared Photography of Andy Lee
Welsh filmmaker Andy Lee is obsessed with photography. Although he’s fascinated with portraiture, his recent focus has been landscape photography—traveling to three continents—taking stunning shots of planet Earth. His latest trip to Chile provided a breathtaking view of the soaring mountains of Patagonia—a spectacle seen by very few people. Images © Andy Lee.