Category: Face Of The Day

Face Of The Day

Police Move In To Clear Away Hong Kong Protest Sites

Pro-democracy protesters use umbrellas to protect themselves from police’s pepper spray on a street outside of Hong Kong Government Complex on October 14, 2014. Protesters took over Lung Wo Road after police cleared off the barricades on Queen’s Road. Protesters continue to call for open elections and the resignation of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. By Anthony Kwan/Getty Images.

Face Of The Day

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D.L. Cade describes Elido Turco’s series Dream Creatures as “a study in mirrored tree bark images”:

Turco loves walking the mountain paths of his native Friuli with his wife, and for years he would use this time to try and find human forms and faces formed by the bark and roots of the trees in the forest. The catches, he admits, were few and far between until, one day, curiosity got the best of him and he decided to mirror an image on his computer. What he discovered was “a world of … fantastic creatures” the he had never realized existed. …

From the series’ description:

Silently, on tiptoe, within their universe I feel observed. A mutual understanding allows my presence in their world… an unreal world populated by entities created in the dense forests, in the shade of ancient trees and rocks.

Emblematic characters, grim, sinister, sweet, joyous… Each one with its own story to tell, so many stories and personalities engraved in the deep rough texture of their faces, expressions sometimes impenetrable.

See more of Turco’s work here.

Face Of The Day

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Russian-born illustrator Yulia Brodskaya crafts her art from paper. She described her process in an interview last year:

Could you please explain what paper quilling is and tell us a little about the work process? 

Quilling is a paper craft that involves the use of paper strips that are rolled, shaped, and glued together to create decorative designs. The name is believed to be derived from the feather quill on which the strips of paper were rolled.The technique itself is really simple; this is something anyone can do; there are quilling tools available in craft shops designed to help to learn quilling, there are also pre-cut paper strips and of course numerous video lessons on youtube.

Personally I use cocktail straw and little cocktail sticks for rolling the paper strips (I didn’t know that there are specially designed tools available when I taught myself to shape the paper strips, I started to use the cocktail straw and I still use it now).

The most challenging thing is that this paper craft is very time-consuming and requires lot of patience. In general I prefer the projects where I get the most creative freedom, so probably I mostly enjoy my personal self-initiated works (e.g. portraits), they take the longest, but I believe the result is worth the effort, this helps me to keep rolling.

Watch Brodskaya demonstrate her craft in this video, and see more of her work here and here.

(Hat tip: Lisa Marcus)

 

Face Of The Day

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For his series Burlesque, Sean Scheidt photographed performers before and after their transformations:

In his portraits, Scheidt captures the virtually nondescript everyday face of the performers. These are people who, aside from the occasional colored hair, look, well… normal. In Scheidt’s description of the work, he says that they tended to be quite reserved at first, which made the transformation into their characters all the more transfixing.

Scheidt described his inspiration in an interview earlier this year:

It was really a confluence of two separate things.  First, I was hired to do a shoot for DNA theater.  This allowed me to go backstage and get a glimpse of the transformation of the actors.  About this time, I was also reading Harpo Marx’s autobiography.  Marx talked a lot about Judy Garland, which sent me to search her out on YouTube.  I was amazed to see how, even in her declining years, Garland lit up, once she stepped onto the stage.  I guess it was then that I realized the stage has the power to transform a person into someone else.  The question I wanted to explore was finding the reality within that transformation.

He added:

Capturing those moments, I believe, helps to humanize these performers.  If you were just seeing the “after” shots alone, you might make certain pre-conceived judgements about the person behind the make-up.  I hope this series gets people to think about their reactions to these men and women.

See more of his work here and here.

Face Of The Day

Liberia Races To Expand Ebola Treatment Facilities, As U.S. Troops Arrive

U.S. Air Force personnel put up tents to house a 25-bed hospital for sick Liberian health workers as part of Operation United Assistance in Monrovia, Liberia on October 9, 2014. U.S. President Barack Obama has committed up to 4,000 troops in West Africa to combat the Ebola epidemic, which has killed at least 3,400 people. By John Moore/Getty Images.