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08.05.19

Eye Candy

A Japanese Graphic Designer Whose Still Lifes Look Almost Like They’re Moving

Moodboards at the ready: Here’s a body of work you’re probably going want to bookmark from beginning to end. Mina Tabei is a Japanese graphic designer and art director whose portfolio — which spans everything from CD design to still life compositions to frame-worthy flyers and book covers deserving of display — feels at once playful and scientific.
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03.07.19

Sighted

How Do You Capture Kinetic Motion in a Still Photo?

That's the challenge Kinfolk magazine recently gave London-based photographer Aaron Tilley for its current Architecture issue. Tilley's work is often concerned with motion or the moment just before motion begins; his subjects include bread whose slices appear caught in mid-tumble or paper sheets that seem to be floating on a table's edge. For Kinfolk, however, the still-life photographer was asked to create the effect of a Rube Goldberg machine — a series of photos in which one action triggers another and another until the payoff in the final frame.
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07.26.18

Eye Candy

In a New Series, A Sicilian Still-Life Artist Says Goodbye to Beige

The Sicilian-born, London-based designer Oscar Piccolo has a self-professed obsession. He is compelled to take vases and arrange them just so, manipulating how the light shines through, meticulously moving through tableaux until arriving — ecstatically — at just the right one. This fascination, he admits, “is becoming a bit of a problem.” Yet at the core of this compulsion is a relatively simple proposition: “All in all, my work explores the relation between objects and their positioning.”
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05.01.18

Excerpt: Exhibition

At Morgan Lehman, Two Artists Exploring the Slippery Nature of Spatial Perception

Seeing the work of photographer Erin O'Keefe and painter Matt Kleberg side by side, it’s as if they are of one mind: the brightest orangey reds, the richest teals and greens, and the textured yellows; the crisp angles, the unexpected shapes, and the lively abstractions. Their current collaboration, a two-person exhibition titled Ecstatic Vernacular on view at Morgan Lehman in New York until May 19, is a conversation between the artists and their differing mediums.
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06.26.17

Sighted

Buy These Curated Arrangements from Daniela Jacobs, Queen of the Still Life

Daniela Jacobs sees the world through the lens of the still life — something that's instantly obvious with a scroll through her Instagram page, where her beautifully shaped and textured ceramics are placed in and among the best props and treasures. So when her latest collection of shoppable still lifes, called ARC Accents, came about, it had evolved over years of accumulation and a love for secondhand items. “I didn't want to start a secondhand shop, but rather a curated collection of pieces, both found and of my own design.”
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12.23.16

Excerpt: Book

A New Book’s Palm Springs Still-Lifes — And Aging Female Models — Are the Epitome of Chic

The holidays may be coming up this weekend, but for our money, the best gift this season won't be available until after Christmas — that's when pre-orders start shipping for DUNES, a 96-page journal that serves as both a nostalgic love letter for and a thrift and vintage guide to Palm Springs, California. DUNES was conceived by photographer Lauren Coleman — who spent her childhood in an iconic Palm Springs house — and produced as a collaboration between Coleman, graphic designer Sarah Kissell, and stylist Tiff Horn.
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11.18.15

Invitation

Ladies & Gentlemen and Robin Stein Team Up on a Still Life Inspired by Moholy-Nagy, Not Memphis

You know all those contemporary still-life clichés, like pastel backgrounds, cactuses, and Sottsass-approved geometric shapes? When New York photographer Robin Stein recently teamed up with Brooklyn design studio Ladies & Gentlemen for a studio visit (coming soon) and impromptu creative photo shoot (pictured after the jump), the longtime friends decided to toss all those ubiquitous tropes out the window and do something different.
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03.05.15

Eye Candy

Still Lifes by Belgian Photographer Frederik Vercruysse

Still life photography is having a big week on Sight Unseen — yesterday we featured a pair of stylists who built their reputation on it and are now moving into interiors, and today we're highlighting a photographer who approaches shooting interiors just as though they were still lifes. Belgian-born talent Frederik Vercruysse, in fact, describes his entire body of work as "still life photography in the broadest sense of the word," according to his website, applying the approach not just to interiors but to portraits, fashion shows, and the occasional landscape as well (for clients like Wallpaper magazine, Sophie Buhai, and Muller Van Severen). But then, of course, there are his actual still lifes, which we've decided to focus on here. Shot mostly for magazines, they represent the purest form of his aim "to photograph the subject in its purest form."
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10.03.14

Sighted

Thomas Albdorf and the Perfectly Uncomposed Still Life Photograph

Austrian photographer Thomas Albdorf shoots with a 35mm camera that results in a grittiness that is refreshing in this digital age, and his background as a designer is clearly evident in his calculated and well-balanced photographs. His still lifes — constructed from mundane objects or littered building materials — are full of texture, pattern, and intrigue.
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