📸 RIP Oliviero Toscani, Getty + Shutterstock Merger

ON FEATURE SHOOT

Rethinking Photography Through Nature and Sustainability

As the technological advancements such as generative imagery for instance continues to dominate the current artistic landscape, some photographers and artists try to redefine the boundaries of the medium through new and alternative practices. For Oriana Confente, it is through a focus on ecology and sustainability that she finds her strength as an artist. With a deep understanding and commitment to fight against environmental issues and to explore sustainability, as well as a respect for the natural world, Oriana challenges traditional photographic and artistic norms by collaborating and experimenting with plant life, using them as the primary focus of her work.

Rooted in what is called “alternative phytography”, she explores historical and analog processes showing an hands-on and experimental approach to image-making and art. By combining this with a critical awareness of the ethical and ecological implications of her work, the artist opens the door to new innovative ways of image-making. In projects such as “Exercises in Seeing as a Leaf”, she highlights the interconnectedness that we as humans have with nature, inviting her audience to consider the stories that plants and nature can tell.

Read the interview on Feature Shoot.

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‘The Condor & The Bull’ by Michael Bednar

“A procession of Indigenous villagers emerges from Peru’s Andes Mountains like beacons in the dawn. It’s the first morning of Qoyllur Rit’i (the Festival of the Snow Star), held when the Pleiades constellation returns to the equatorial sky. Thousands of Quechua-speaking peoples have made an arduous pilgrimage 5,000 meters high to honour the Apus (gods of the mountains), the arrival of harvest season, and, these days, Jesus Christ.

“As the sun rises, Ukukus (the half-man, half-bear guardians of these mountains) start their ascent, bearing wooden crosses, up to the glaciers they protect. Others dressed like black-and-white birds flap down the slopes to greet the new day. They represent the Andean condor—the symbol of the Quechua people, still fighting for their freedom under Spanish reign.

“Qoyllur Rit’i is a syncretic event: Catholic imagery and national flags intermix with traditional tassels, feathers, and flutes that shake and whistle in a three-day trance. It’s an example of Indigenous survival and adaptation—resistance as well as coexistence.”—Michael Bednar, photographer.

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NEWS

Oliviero Toscani, photographer and co-founder of Colors magazine, dies at 82.

What relaxation looks like in one of the world’s hardest working countries.

A city on fire can’t be photographed.

Getty + Shutterstock are merging.

US Congress Reforms National Park Rules Limiting Commercial Photography.

How Can Synthetic Images Render Blackness?

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