Category Archives: Art

Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases

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Laurie says:

Zanele Muholi‘s portraits of lesbian South Africans are both beautiful art and incredibly courageous work. Her work brings reality and presence to the portrayal of their lives.
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Quotes are from Muholi’s interview with Laura Snoad in The Guardian:

Zanele Muholi meshes her work in photography, video, and installation with human rights activism to create visibility for the black lesbian and transgender communities of South Africa

Faces and Phases portrait series, which uses firsthand accounts to speak to the experience of living in a country that constitutionally protects the rights of LGBTI people but often fails to defend them from targeted violence.
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One of her projects, Faces and Phases, an archive of portraits of South Africa’s black lesbian community, has been running for 11 years and is her life’s work. There was nothing like this when she was growing up, young and gay in a homophobic society, scarred by extreme violence. South Africa has some of the most progressive equality laws in the world, but that doesn’t translate as safety for the country’s LGBT population. Attacks, murders and “corrective” rapes of lesbians are a brutal reality. Muholi’s project is vital – several of the women she has photographed have since been killed, such as Busi Sigasa, a writer and poet who inspired it. “The risk we take is on a daily basis,” says Muholi, “just living, and thinking what might happen, not only to you but also your fellow activists and friends who are living their lives.”
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..Muholi is exposed, and her work has been targeted – her house was broken into and hard drives containing her portraits of women were stolen. She does worry about her safety. “I’m scared. I won’t pretend not to be.” But, she says, what is the alternative? “This work needs to be shown, people need to be educated, people need to feel that there are possibilities. I always think to myself, if you don’t see your community, you have to create it. I can’t be dependent on other people to do it for us.” It is a continuing resistance “because we cannot be denied existence. This is about our lives, and if queer history, trans history, if politics of blackness and self-representation are so key in our lives, we just cannot sit down and not document and bring it forth.”
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Her work “is a space for people to be visible, respected and recognised”. And, she adds, “being remembered most of all”

Finalists Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017

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Laurie says:

These images are from the astronomy photographer of the year contest. These are four of the finalists. All the images are stunning. See them here. I love astronomy photography when it’s brilliant, and these are!
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Auroral Crown: Yulia Zhulikova (Russia) During an astrophotography tour of the Murmansk region with Stas Korotkiy, an amateur astronomer and popularizer of astronomy in Russia, the turquoise of the Aurora Borealis swirls above the snow covered trees. Illuminated by street lamps, the trees glow a vivid pink forming a contrasting frame for Nature’s greatest light show.

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Fall Milk: Brandon Yoshizawa (USA). The snow-clad mountain in the Eastern Sierras, California, towers over the rusty aspen grove aligned perfectly in front of it, whilst our galaxy, the Milky Way, glistens above.
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Ignite the Lights: Nicolas Alexander Otto (Germany). After a long hike from his small cabin to Kvalvika, Lofoten Islands in Norway, the photographer arrived at the slopes above the beach around midnight. During the hike the auroral display was relatively weak, but when he made it to the beach the sky ignited in a colourful spectacle of greens and purples framed by the mossy, green landscape. The image is stacked from six different exposures to combat high ISO and thermal noise in the foreground. The sky was added from one of these exposures.
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Aurora Over Svea: Agurtxane Concellon (Spain). The purples and greens of the Northern Lights radiate over the coal mining city of Svea, in the archipelago of Svalbard. The earthy landscape below the glittering sky is illuminated by the strong lights of industry at the pier of Svea.

I would not like to be the judge/s making the final choice.