Combining elements of portraiture and fairy tales, Porto-based artist Kati Berinkey tattoos striking busts of women in vibrant, candy-colored hues. They have a sense of movement about them, with tiny lines that convey three-dimensionality. These characters often appear as modern day renditions of classic stories like that of Adam of Eve and Little Red Riding […]
Category: Portraits
Aesthetics of Melancholy: Poetic Photography by Natalia Drepina
The ghosts of sorrow, tragedy, and loneliness wander the dormant forests of Natalia Drepina’s photography. Based in a small city in Russia, Drepina brings her love for the silence and solitude of the countryside into her art, exploring the way twisted roots, animal bones, and rain-wet earth reflect the chilled tenderness of the soul in […]
Clouded Eyes and Dark Horizons: Photography by Karina Boissonnier
Karina Boissonnier is a Finland-based photographer who is using the camera to create her imagined world. In a beautiful series of portraits titled “An Introduction: Anna,” which are part of a larger project that she has worked hard on, Boissonnier has captured the subject (Wei Wang) in a dark natural landscape filled with creeping branches […]
The Dreamlike, Story-Filled Paintings of Herakut
Herakut is the name of a German street artist duo comprised of Hera (Jasmin Siddiqui) and Akut (Falk Lehmann). Since 2004, they have joined their skills and shared visions in creating story-and-symbol-filled artworks all around the world, both on buildings as large-scale murals and on canvas, paper, and film in the studio. Duality is a […]
Minimalist Creature Portraits by Delphine Cencig
Delphine Cencig is a French photographer who discovered her passion for photography after working in various fields, such as cosmetics and visual communication. This diverse background shapes her current work, which is best described as vivid and eclectic; through a combination of photography, fashion, makeup, and digital manipulation, she turns models into dolls, beasts, and […]
Puzzling Identity: Alma Haser’s Intriguing Paper Collage Portraits
Alma Haser is a London-based (Germany-born) artist constructing complex portraits that delve into the nuances of identity. Some of the images featured here are from her “Within 15 Minutes” series, which explores the similarities and differences between identical twins; after photographing a set of twins, Haser then makes the photos into jigsaw puzzles, switching every […]
Transcending Sickness: Atmospheric Portraits by Nihil
Nihil is a French artist residing in Norway. “Ventre” is the name of his ongoing project, which includes short, cryptic texts and images filled with symptoms of illness and rapture, often with a medieval, religious slant. He describes his work as “portraits of saints and martyrs who lost their humanity to drown in divine serenity”; […]
Fantasy Meets Strange Fashion in Ilona D. Veresk’s Photography
Ilona D. Veresk describes her work as “romantic and strange,” full of “infantile curiosity” in her portrayal of limitless fantasies. Born in Izhevsk (a small city in Russia) in 1993, Veresk began her artistic career as a painter before transitioning to freelance photography about three years ago. She now lives in Moscow, where she works […]
Excavated Essence in Impasto: Antony Micallef Interview
The impasto artworks of Antony Micallef defy the long traditions of figural paintings; instead of recreating subjectivity, he distorts and builds upon it to unearth the living, chaotic nature of the medium itself. Micallef’s works have emerged from a long history of postwar, abstract paintings; taught by John Virtue, an English painter whose depictions of […]
Soft and Uncertain Portraits by Kristina Varaksina
Kristina Varaksina is a Russian-born, New York–based artist known for soft-hued portraits conveying the quiet-yet-complex inner worlds of her subjects. We featured her work in the past—specifically, ethereal photographs of a red-haired model—but recently, Varaksina has shared “Anonymous,” a series referencing 20th-century surrealism. As the title suggests, these images are about identity and “the unease […]