As far as I can remember, the only thing I was really able to do with chalk was draw flowers and stick figures. Actually-- no that's a lie, there was the occasional tic tac toe game, or a hopscotch grid if I was feeling super energetic, but nothing serious; I was more of a let's play tag and jump double dutch kind of kid. I imagine if I'd had a look at Joe Cruz's art work at a young age, well who knows you might have been looking at a modern day Floda Kahlo, maybe a Paflo Picasso.... a Vincent Van Flogh? Ok, I should of stopped at the first one, but anyway, back to the post. Yo I'm in love with these; by adding color to these photographs he totally changes the mood and dynamic of them. Based out of a London, Cruz not only shows that you don't need anything fancy to make good art, but just some kind of medium, a good idea and creativity. If you read my blog these may remind you a little of John Baldessari who I wrote about a couple months ago (post here) and in a way they're both similar. Seriously though these are just a FEW of Cruz's work, check out some of his other work on his website.
isn't that cool? sorry if it's distracting. anyway, you know how on facebook there are those people that you don't know, but have mutual friends with... so you occasionally facebook stalk them because they're cool or something? that's like what KESH and I's friendship (or lack there of) is like. but it's kinda weird that i follow her on almost every social network, probably borderline stalkerish but whatever. Kesh is pretty cool, she DJs, was once a back up dancer for M.I.A (one of her close friends) and in addition to that... she models, designs and is an artist. On top of all that she's undoubtedly the queen of self portraiture, i mean honestly. i've always worried that the whole concept of self portrait photography may come off as conceited or narcissistic even, but she makes it look so easy and her photos are so much more than just pictures of her in and of themselves. Kesh really takes shit to the next level with her edits, what's cool is that a lot of her art is basically manipulated photographs, but she's so good at the model/photographer/artist thing that it makes for good art... and even better selfies. check out some of her work here http://www.keshcontinues.com/
so there aren't many photographers my age that i really fuck with. i usually just observe techniques and good photographs by older or more established photographers. but when i do discover someone whose work i really like it's great cause i just scroll through their shit for a while and can get super inspired by the stuff i see. that said, zora sicher is sort of like a merge between the two. her sense of depth of field and the way she can convey the youth/emotion of her subjects (usually her friends) in photographs is really unique. i've been fucking with her work since i started following her on tumblr like last year... http://zorasicher.tumblr.com/
