Vivid color palettes, disruptive charm, surreal landscapes, intimacy that flirts with desperation — these are just a few of the threads connecting this collection of photography, curated by our photo editor, Cheryl Georgette Arent. A dreaminess permeates throughout, eliciting contemplative pause: how did I get here, am I allowed, what happens next? These questions are never answered (nor could they ever be), but therein lies the beauty; as viewers, we stumble into worlds which playfully refuse understanding, and it’s up to you accept their surreal terms or wake up into the familiar. So, take some time to explore these precious moments, because like our wildest, most beautiful dreams, the figures and scenery feel fleeting. Embrace the mystery while it’s here, breathing.
I’ve known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me. And I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times — walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me. – Gordon Parks
1. Mike Bailey Gates
wwwmikebaileygates.com
instagram: @michaelbaileygates
“For me the noise of Time is not sad: I love bells, clocks, watches — and I recall that at first photographic implements were related to techniques of cabinetmaking and the machinery of precision: cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.”― Roland Barthes
2. Brigette Bloom
www.brigettebloom.com
instagram: @brigettebloom
“When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not emerge, do not leave: they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies.” ― Roland Barthes
3. Angelina Dreem
www.angelinadreem.net
instagram: @simulacraycray
“To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”― Henri Cartier-Bresson
4. Samantha West
www.samanthawest.net
instagram: @samantha_west
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” ― Alfred Stieglitz
5. Charlotte Rutherford
“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.” ― Joan Miró
6. Geordie Wood
www.geordiewood.com
instagram: @geordiewood
“It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson
7. Jeff Bark
“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”― Ansel Adams
8. Martha Colburn (polaroid/paintings)
“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.”― Edward Weston
9. Adarsha Benjamin
www.analogdreamscape.tumblr.com/
“For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”― Henri Cartier-Bresson
10. Socrates Mitsios
www.socratesmitsios.com
instagram: @socratesmitisios
“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” ― Robert Frank
instagram: @shaedetar“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”― Elliott Erwitt
12. Viktor Vaughn
http://viktor-vaughn.tumblr.com
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls” ― Ted Grant
13. Amanda Charchian
“Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference” ― Robert Frank
14. Brittany Markert
“Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.” – Man Ray
15. Ryan McGinley
“Photography is a love affair with life.” – Burk Uzzle
16. Michael Pudelka
“A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.” ― Diane Arbus
Curated by Cheryl Georgette Arent. She is also a photographer, learn more about her @bohemianforest