Journal
Paint-Splashed Formentera
Amy Beasley’s abstract images add new depth to Ibiza's sister island London-based photographer Amy Beasley recently took a day trip from Ibiza to its sister island, Formentera. “You catch a 30-minute ferry to the small island and as soon as you get there, the tempo shifts,” says Beasley. “We hired bikes to explore the island and cycled along the coast to one of the beaches where the water is basically like the Caribbean.” Her photographs are all shot on film and then painted over with bold, sweeping brushstrokes. “I try not to overthink where or what I paint and just go with my instincts,” she says. From a father with his kid to passing ferries and from the hazy purple salt flats to the azure-coloured sea, Beasley’s photos are snapshots of idyllic summer holidays, but given a whole new dimension through brushstrokes. In an age of camera phones and Instagram, images have become somewhat disposable – and for Beasley adding the abstract painting changes our perception of an image. Beasley is inspired by the German artist Gerhard Richter’s over-painted photographs, and is trying to bring her photographs – and the moments they capture – to life. “The image has become one of the most important symbols of our generation, yet the images themselves have little longevity,” she says. “We are constantly bombarded with images in advertising or social media. They’re unavoidable. This is the predicament of the digital era, which is something I’m trying to address in my work.” Words by Iona Goulder for Amuse. View more of Amy's work on her website.
Paris' Pigalle Basketball Court
Formerly cast in a bold, primary coloured scape, the Pigalle Duperreé basketball court has just been given a vibrant makeover. French fashion brand Pigalle teamed up with Parisian creative agency ILL-STUDIO & Nike to give the court site a vibrant makeover. The walls feature hot gradients and hues of fuchsia, dark blue, canary yellow and burnt orange. The court re-up came as part of a new collaboration between Pigalle & NikeLAB, and is sandwiched between two apartment blocks in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The colours match the '90s basketball aesthetic on which the collaboration is based upon. "The anatomy of the human body as well as its performances have had a lifelong relationship with art, since the legacy of greek and roman antiquity, sport is represented as a dominant idea within the beauty of an era. This never-ending quest for modernity has forged a strong bond between functionality and aesthetics over the decades. Through this new court, we wish to explore the relationship between sport, art and culture and its emergence as a powerful socio-cultural indicator of a period in time. We aim to establish visual parallels between the past, present and future of modernism from the ‘Avant Garde’ era of the beginning of the 20th century, to the ‘open source’ times we live in today, and our interpretation of the future aesthetics of basketball and sport in general." - ILL-STUDIO Images by Alex Penfornis & the court's set designer Sebastien Michelini.
Watch: A Tens USA Road Trip
"We drove for 90 hours across 3,392 miles to discover the States' finest views." Follow young Swiss filmmaker Kevin Ringli through west-USA with Tens. He brought with him a very talented crew who dreamed of capturing a new part of the world in a different light. After growing up and developing their skills in and around the Swiss alps, the golden light of the west was calling... Images by David Hubacher Follow the Crew @davidhubacher, @kevlevitate, @opticchina, @dom_nike & @kevin_mr Gear (video):Canon EOS 1DX MKIISigma 20mm f/1.4Sigma 35mm f/1.4Canon 100mm f/2.8Dji Ronin MDji Phantom 3 ProGear (photo):Canon 5D Mark IIICanon 16-35mm f/2.8Canon 35mm f/1.4Sigma 85mm f/1.4
Burma: To Stand & Stare
By Tom Welsh With a looming job in Singapore I persuaded production to book me an early flight out from London - the very next day. Facing a week on my own anywhere in South East Asia, I juggled the well-trodden destinations... but a couple of friends suggested Myanmar (Burma). Hours before my flight left London I submitted a visa, booked a flight from Singapore to Yangon and a couple of nights in a Hostel. I barely knew anything about the place and joyously had no time for Trip Advisor threads & information overload; I’d packed no digital video kit or laptop, just my Bolex & a backpack of 16mm stock. I dictated my movements each day on advice from locals & other travellers, trying to cover as much of the country as I could by train - travelling North through Bagan up to Mandalay, and further on to Gotiek. It’s a truly beautiful country with undoubtedly the warmest people I’ve met; and a place I spent whole afternoons without seeing another tourist or traveller. The verse is from ‘The Golden Gate’ - a book of British poetry for Burmese school children that I bought on the street on my final day. The poem felt closed my trip perfectly - I’d spent most of the week staring out of train windows feeling a million miles away from London. Soundtrack by the wonderful Leif Vollebekk. I had his record ‘Twin Solitude’ essentially on repeat for the whole of the trip. Shot on Kodak Vision 3 with my Bolex S16. Process & scan by Kodak London. Follow Tom Welsh on Instagram.
The Land of the Rising Sun
Exploring Japan with Sam & Jess The six months of Winter in England’s Capital forces my girlfriend and I into spending copious nights in the deepest darkest depths of the year, plotting where we’re going to escape come Spring. This year, there was a particular draw to Japan. Having visited Tokyo for a severely short four days last year (we were on a RTW trip, it wasn’t a long weekend, that’d be bizarre) we knew we craved the land of the rising sun once again (any sun for that matter).Here’s some images from our 13 day trip that saw us re-visit Tokyo for just under a week, embracing the inspiration that it oozes, before travelling South to Kyoto to explore the city’s temples. Continuing down country on the much famed Shinkansen, we arrived in Okayama, hopping on a local train to the coastal town of Uno as we caught the short ferry to Teshima and Naoshima, or the ‘Art Islands’ as they’re more widely known. Follow @samsbowl & @jessicalew__
Good Things Never Die
A Visual Cuba Trip by Enzo Iriarte “If a person didn’t come to an end, if s/he didn’t dissolve, things would lose their capacity to touch and move ourselves. Indeed, it’s in its uncertainty where life’s most precious gift lies. “When one gives up love on someone else and that lack of pertinence comes to play, even if that person keeps being the same.” The tiny sorrow which goes with a flower drying up, the sense of ending which exists in all things.” I believe in the beauty of all ephemeral things, natural beauty and the implausible. I believe in love and death, do we love thus we’re loved to die OR do we die to love and be loved? Everything comes to an end, whatever the reason may be. A river is itself a river because it ends in the sea, and that’s always like that. It is that constant uncertainty which makes us feel alive. Good things never die.” Follow @enzoiriarte ~ via C-Heads Magazine.
Surfing Double Island Point
A Day Dream by Dom Stuart With a surf festival happening at our local haunt, we finally decided its time to venture to Double Island Point. A more remote point break 60 kilometre drive up the beach from Noosa. After being kept awake by a stormy Queenstown night we were in two minds about the trip but decided to go for it despite the forecast of heavy rain all day. Whilst at the Gas station fuelling up and letting tyre pressures down we bumped into another local crew also en route to D.I, 2 cars became 3. As it was our maiden voyage onto the beach in our borrowed car (1997 Suzuki Vitara) we were a little nervous at first but soon realised it could take it in its stride. As always, the forecast was wrong. We spent the next 12 hours in beautiful sunshine. Cruising down the beach, windows down, surfing the wind with our hands in anticipation of what lies ahead. After we leave the sand, a short burn down a 4x4 track winding over the headland and we are popped out facing North West overlooking a concertinaed ocean. Lines and lines of waves floating towards us in a beautiful blue hue, hardly distinguishable from the sky. Everybody was stoked. Like kids with an unexpected day off school. We surfed, we surfed again, I shot photos, I surfed again. We found time to shovel some food into ourselves before the drive back. Racing the tides down the beach, we made it home, back to reality, back from our day dream. For more images from the trip, follow Dom on Instagram here.
Desert X: Bringing Illusion to Coachella
Running until April 30th, the Coachella Valley and 45 miles of its surrounding desert landscape is being disrupted by 16 contemporary art installations. The free event, curated by Neville Wakefield serves as the perfect bridge between Palm Springs Modernism week and Coachella music festival. "What excites me about this project is it’s an opportunity to see how art behaves outside of institutional walls," says Wakefield. "To see what it does to communities and how it draws different people in." 'Mirage', by Doug Aitken is modelled on a typical California-style family ranch, only the building is an empty shell that's fully clad in mirrors. The effect camouflages the building against the horizon from afar, but serves to internally ricochet the light of the desert valley from the inside. This creates a fractured, kaleidoscopic effect which adds an angle of discomfort within the empty family home. "After World War II, the ranch style's streamlined simplicity gained popularity as commercial builders employed a simplified assembly line approach to create this efficient form, matching the rapid growth of the suburbs," said the artist. "The mass-produced ranch home became a familiar sight across the country, the style filling the American landscape as quickly as each new subdivision was built." Aitken describes the Desert X experiment as “a vast sprawling parkour” and “puzzle of pieces that are all different within the land”. “I wanted to be here to see where suburbia ends and the landscape begins. This location was kind of perfect in a way. You have the seductive beauty, and then you have the wind farm, and suburbia.” Another display, created by Jennifer Bolande features billboards with snapshots of the mountains behind. Driving slowly down the desert road through Palm Springs, the billboards satisfyingly 'click' into place in front of their backdrops. The artwork was birthed from classic 'Burma-Shave' style sequential billboard ads, which told a story that could only be experienced in motion. Desert X will disappear from the valley after April 30th, however Aitken's mirrored house will remain through 'til October later this year. If you're in the area or travelling there, visit the Desert X website for information on how to / when to attend. View more works below from Claudia Comte, Phillip K Smith III & Glenn Kaino. All images by Lance Gerber.
The Problem of the Wilderness
A film by Tens co-founder & filmmaker, Tom Welsh. I went to Alaska for New Year with my friend Dan; we spent a week travelling North from Anchorage by rail, 4x4 & light aircraft. I took along my A7SII for the trip. Towards the end of 2016 I desired a trip disconnected from technology & work, somewhere 'into the wild' that I could disconnect somewhat from life in London. After our Tens campaign shoot in Mexico in December, I headed north to Vancouver and spent Christmas snowboarding. Alaska looked like the most logical stop after that for a week or so in the wilderness. The more (little) I researched and booked, I realised I should probably take a camera with me, but didn't want to be inconvenienced by all the gear I usually travel with - FS7, 16mm kit etc. So just took the basics. The verse is from a book I found in our cabin - 'The Problem of the Wilderness' - that really resonated with the journey. Bob Marshall was an environmental activist who wrote extensively about Alaska in the early 20th Century. "It is well to reflect that the wilderness furnishes perhaps the best opportunity for pure esthetic enjoyment. This requires that beauty be observed as a unity, and that for the brief duration of any pure esthetic experience the cognition of the observed object must completely fill the spectator’s cosmos. There can be no extraneous thoughts—no question about the creator of the phenomenon, its structure, what it resembles or what vanity in the beholder it gratifies. “The purely esthetic observer has for the moment forgotten his own soul”, he has only one sensation left and that is exquisiteness. In the wilderness, with its entire freedom from the manifestations of human will, that perfect objectivity which is essential for pure esthetic rapture can probably be achieved more readily than among any other forms of beauty." Everything is shot on the Sony A7SII, often with the Zhiyun Crane 2 axis gimbal. I used 3 lenses: Sony 24-240/4-5.6, Sony 10-18/4, SLR Magic 50/1.1. I shot in PP8 Slog3.Cine colour with CINE4 Gamma, graded with DELUTS (deluts.com) in Premiere. Follow Tom's future adventures at @getdeluxe
