Diary 310111 | Autumn Winter 2011|2012

Posted on 31/01/2011 by W&V

Designer diary photo (snapshots) entry | Autumn Winter 2011|2012 collection

Fourteen actors acting | A video gallery of classic screen types

Posted on 13/12/2010 by W&V

The New York Times published a video gallery in which 14 famous actors who defined cinema in 2010 capture classic screen types. The performers including Natalie Portman, Matt Damon, Robert Duvall, Noomi Rapace, Jennifer Lawrence and Anthony Mackie act out a number of fascinating, almost surreal and very interesting scenes. The videos where directed by Solve Sundsbo, set to a score by Canadian composer Owen Pallett of “Final Fantasy” and “The Arcade Fire”.

Solve Sundsbo’s clients as a fashion photographer have included Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Dolce & Gabbana. The videos accompany the black-and-white portrait series which Solve Sundsbo shot for “The Scene Makers: Actors Who Defined Cinema in 2010,” in the Hollywood Issue of The New York Times Magazine. These short clips portray not only the art, but also the joy and power of performance.

Please visit the New York Times magazine gallery to find all movies.

Photos and video Solve Sundsbo | Music by Owen Pallett | New York Times magazine

Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops | Book

Posted on 07/10/2010 by W&V

On the 14th of October 2010 Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops will be presenting their new book which carries the title “Inge Grognard/Ronald Stoops”. The book acts as an anthology of over 30 years of collaboration, with emphasis placed on the duo’s non-commercial work, including projects with other like-minded people such as Narcisse Tordoir, Martin Margiela, A.F. Vandevorst, Jurgi Persoons and Andrea Cammarosano. It should be viewed as an antidote to their fashion assignments and gives an insight into the influences, outlook and their relationship as creative partners.

The work created by Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops also illustrates how tightly-knit the Belgian fashion is. Stylists, designers, photographers and graphic artists all fed into and supported each other to create that now-recognizable Belgian style which also has been supported widely by Belgian shop and boutique owners who created a home market for this Belgian Fashion.

Inge Grognard about the book:
“This book starts and ends with a scream,” says Grognard. The images Inge is referring to are a black-and-white photo of Kristina -one of Martin Margiela’s house models- with her two brothers, and a colour photo of two of Inge’s cats. “The scream symbolizes how Ronald and I communicate. To outsiders the way we work together must come across as very harsh. We tend to yell at each other a lot and discussions can easily get out of hand,” she continues.

The book will be available in stores by the end of october 2010.

Photos: Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops | Published by Ludion

Luc Braquet | The beauty of everyday reality

Posted on 04/08/2010 by W&V

The Paris, France, based photographer Luc Braquet has a fascinating point of view which is revealed in his photographs.Regardless whether he shoots fashion, people, landscapes or creates shots from his travels his captured points in time and on specific locations are showing a feel of casual observation and reality. His images are not just shots which show life but they basically are life and the world around us themselves. The beauty of everyday reality.

Photos by Luc Braquet | Luc Braquet portfolio website

Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin | Exhibition

Posted on 28/06/2010 by W&V

Currently the Foam Fotografiemuseum ( Photography museum) is presenting an exhibition of the stunning work by the photographic duo of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The exhibition is titled: Pretty Much Everything. It shows approximately 300 photographs spanning 25 years of the duo’s career. Art, fashion and portrait works all exist next to each other. By disregarding any chronological order the combinations of images are based on personal, formal, social, political and intuitive associations that show the way the artists have lived with the images for 25 years.

Inez van Lamsweerde en Vinoodh Matadin launched their international career with the publication of ten pages in the British magazine The Face in 1994. It was here that for the first time in a fashion series the models and the backgrounds were photographed separately and subsequently combined into a single image by use of a computer. The series typified van Lamsweerde and Matadin’s hyper-realistic style and was made to celebrate and subvert fashion within the context of a magazine.

Dubiousness is at the base of practically every image they make. Their work is ambiguous in every sense of the word and balances deliberately on the thin rope between fashion and art, perverting both worlds, mirroring the strangeness of everyday life through an extreme enlargement of a singular part.

Since each photograph demands its own dimensions, and some have been shown over the years and have their own existing size and frame style, the exhibition will have a dynamic flow and will read like a huge stream of images – forming one flowing, pulsating sentence rather than divisions that are grouped by size or subject. This showing will draw the viewer into Inez and Vinoodh’s world of constant dualism, duality and ambiguity, as well as their obsession with giving meaning to the surface, while oscillating between horror and beauty, the grotesque and the quiet, and the spiritual and the banal.