His architectural series, Desert Realty, sees Ed Freeman take dilapidated motels, trailers, fast food outlets and other buildings and using Photoshop, places them in the middle of the desert. The manipulation and touch ups gives the images a heightened sense of isolation and abandonment.
Harold Feinstein was born in Coney Island in 1931. With the street as his backdrop and the public as his muse, Feinstein began shooting photos at just fifteen and has amassed an epochal body of work over the following seven decades that tells the story of this curious part of the world. Feinstein’s photographs, which span six decades, capture the magic of Coney Island. “It is America’s playground for the working class–classic Americana exuding the spirit of generosity and common humanity that is the best of the American spirit,” he said.
Originaire des rivages de l’Atlantique, j’aurais pu être bercé toute ma vie par le bruit des vagues mais la vie a fait que j’ai fini par devenir un enfant des villes, sans jamais vraiment comprendre les conséquences et l’impact émotionnel qu’elles pouvaient avoir sur ma pensée. Agé, maintenant, d’une trentaine d’années, j’ai instinctivement suivi l’énergie de mon subconscient pour m’immerger de plus en plus dans un univers sans artifice, la nature et l’immensité de ses paysages. Lorsque l’horizon s’ouvre à moi, j’ai un profond sentiment de liberté. C’est sans doute pour toutes ces raisons que j’ai comme un besoin vital de figer l’instant lors de mes visions aux atmosphères éphémères. A l’aube de l’ère du numérique, je vis avec mon temps dans un monde de boitier reflex. Alors, quand le regard est créatif, mes réflexes sont chromatiques. J’ai toujours transporté mes inspirations dans tous ce que j’entreprend. En photographie, j’aime les ambiances de rêveries mais sans la technique, je ne pourrais véhiculer cette vision. Alban Henderyckx
Rising from the remnants of what was once a vast inland sea, California’s Central Valley is an agricultural empire unparalleled in the history of the world. Covering an area larger than ten US states, it is home to America’s richest farms and generates close to $20 billion dollars’ worth of fresh food each year, nearly half of the US supply.
Though this wealth comes from the earth, there is little natural about how it is produced: the Central Valley is a place not so much rural as it is empty-urban — a thoroughly industrialized farm landscape whose once undulating plains have been tractored into table-top flatness, whose streams have been dammed and whose lakes have been drained. Some farms have become so automated that the tractors are piloted by satellite, and some plots are so vast and monotonous that thousands of pollinating bees die each year because they can’t find their way back to their hives. So much water has been pumped from the aquifers that in places the ground has dropped by fifty feet. Most tellingly, the fields are planted, tended and harvested by migrants brought in by the busload: few make more than $10,000 per year, eight out of ten are undocumented, and hardly any know the names of the farmers in whose fields they work.
From the roots of this unnatural wealth has sprung a dysfunctional society, communities whose chronically high unemployment and generational poverty have fostered social ills more commonly associated with big cities. In tiny towns surrounded by farm fields, drug and alcohol addiction is rampant, teenage pregnancies are among the highest in the nation, crime and gangs are commonplace.Much is revealed by how a society raises its food — the one thing people both pay for and pray over — and the Central Valley tells us much about modern life. A modern rural distopia, it is a landscape at once rich but impoverished, industrialized but rural, inhabited but unsettled: a kingdom, but one made of dust, nourishing millions as it consumes itself. Matt Black.
“My mission in photography is to ‘force’ you to look at the reality of life; the reality of poverty, injustice and corruption that affects many in the 3rd world countries. The worst abuser of the poor little children is the one who knows about their situation but not coming forward to help. My favorite subjects are always the street, the working environment and low light photography. My all time favourite photographer is Werner Bishof. I really admire his work about people.” Thomas Tham. Please have a look at the other extraordinary pictures that this photographer shares on his Flickr page.
Life in Pictures 