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Urban Earth

"Through the eyes of the Urban Geographer."

We have introduced you to Daniel Raven-Ellison before.  This a man with a compelling story to tell, and many still to write .... and of course photograph. Welcome to URBAN EARTH, only now in his words and with his video compilation of images.

"Cities are awesome places. They are as much an ecosystem as any tropical rainforest or coral reef. Inhabited by one of the most successful animals on the planet, humans, these urban masses are our nests. At some point in 2008 someone was born or moved into a town or city and tipped the balance so that now, for the first time in history, more people are living in urban than rural places. The home of free running, government, businesses, over 3 billion people and probably you – how well do we really know and understand these places? I wanted to get a new take on the concrete jungle and so it became my mission to start walking across some of the largest cities on Earth.

Exploration is a state of mind. Anyone can explore, everyone is an explorer and anywhere can be explored. From kissing a mouth to peering into the limits of visible outer space we all search for answers and experiences. For me exploration is all about searching for answers to questions even if you don’t know what they are when you set out. While trekking to the heart of tropical jungle forests may be distant and exotic, exploring near and familiar places is just as important.

Despite most of us living in cities few of us explore them properly. If you live in a city you probably live as an island hopper, living in one (island) area and using a car, bus or train to hop to other islands for school, work and places to chill out. For most people the spaces between and around these islands are left unexplored and remain confused or blank on their mental map. The reasons why we don’t go places are numerous with time, interest and fear all playing their part.

I am fascinated by urban exploration. I’m not only interested in cities themselves, but why so many people want to go on adventures across countryside and not urbanside. And, why when people do explore cities so many people visit landmarks (does Big Ben represent London?) that fail to capture the feel of a city but leave feeling they can ‘done’ and can tick off visiting that place? What does the city feel like away from the bias of guide books and commercial adverts?

For all these reasons and more URBAN EARTH was born.

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Categories SUSO Tags Photography

By Sammy on 27/2/11

SUSO_Jordan_Main

Run The Numbers

Chris Jordan’s photographic art exposes the detritus of mass consumption.

In what he calls ‘evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse’, Chris Jordan captures the shipping ports and industrial yards of America in a macabre but beautiful way. The shocking scale of western consumption is intensely provocative when seen through his lens. It’s pretty disgusting, all told, and his art does as good a guilt-tripping job as any anti-consumerist propaganda I’ve ever seen.

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Categories Politics Photography Tags Photography Art

By on 15/4/09

Diego Maradona

On The Prowl

When Diego went hunting for Belgians.

There are great sporting moments, and then there are great sporting photos. It can be hard to distinguish between the two. Usain Bolt pounding his chest, Roger Federer collapsing to his knees at Wimbledon, Bobby Moore lifting the world cup - all great moments, but not necessarily leading to great photos.

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Categories Sport Photography Tags Football Photography World Cup

By on 14/10/08

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Earth From Above

Yann Arthus-Bertrand shows us the world in a whole new light.

The world looks different from above. Sounds obvious, but you don’t quite realise it until you see it. You can get a sense of that on a plane, but then you get too high, or the clouds move in, or you fall asleep. Unless you own a helicopter, opportunities to see the world from above are fleeting at best. But the photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has made his name doing the work for us, circumnavigating the world’s lower atmosphere in all manner of transport seeking out shots that make you go ‘Woah’. In 2009 he brings a new exhibition to New York, appropriately entitled ‘Earth From Above’, that he hopes will do more than startle; Bertrand’s images are inextricably linked to the environmental issues facing humanity today. More pics inside.

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Categories Photography Tags Yann Arthus-Bertrand Photography

By on 8/10/08

Ike.

In Spite Of The Storm

Startling images do justice to the ferocity of Ike.

Perhaps the disaster capitalists described in Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine might see some good in the recently subsided bout of Atlantic hurricanes, but the rest of the world clearly doesn’t. Ike alone resulted in over 130 deaths and $27 billion of damage. But disasters do, invariably, propel creative people into action, with photographers leading the pack. These images are evidence of that - a telling reminder of a reality we in the UK will hopefully never know.

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Categories Photography Tags Ike Photography

By on 19/9/08

Olaf Hauschulz

Olaf Hauschulz

If David Lynch took pictures of cars.

A period spent working in the darkroom of Mercedes HQ, Stuttgart, awakened Olaf Hauschulz’s love of cars; he’s since made his name as an automotive photographer. In this particular set he creates a sense of cinematic theatricality that befits some of the world’s most desirable automobiles.

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Categories Photography Tags Cars Hauschulz Photography

By on 18/9/08

RE-IMAGINING SPORT

Re-imagining Sport

Paul Pfeiffer Travels Back In Time To Rewrite The Past.

Paul Pfeiffer, relocated to New York in 1990 after growing up in the Philippines, exploits what’s now become basic technology for his spooky meditations on sport and a culture obsessed by frenzied celebrity. One project, The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, sees Pfeiffer taking images of situations in sport, some known, others not, and removing them of all contextual detail. He leaves us with a solitary figure, devoid of teammates, a lone ranger watched by the masses in the stands above.

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Categories Art Photography Tags Art Basketball Pfeiffer Photography

By on 11/9/08

DIVIDED CITY

Divided City

THE KOURTAJME COLLECTIVE DENY A CITY THEY BARELY KNOW.

The picturesque Paris of beauty and high culture is a foreign city to Kourtrajmé. They rarely see it, and they won’t show it. But they are Parisians. Yes, Parisians, driven by the city as they know it, a city of decay, desolation and neglect, but a city of people the authorities would rather forget.

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Categories Film Politics Photography Tags Art JR Kourtrajme Paris Photography

By on 13/8/08

FACES ON WALLS

Faces On Walls

FEW CAN SAY AS MUCH WITH AN IMAGE AS JR.

He’s called JR and he’s French. Nothing special there. The thing that strikes me about JR, though, and the world it seems, is that few can use pictures of people with the kind of impact he does. He blows photographs up big on the streets, pictures of people the world would otherwise forget. And he does it to provoke.

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Categories Art Photography Tags Art JR Photography Street Art

By on 24/7/08

BEAUTIFUL LOSERS

Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers is a new feature documentary film, just premiered in the States, that celebrates the independent and DIY spirit that unified a loose-knit group of American artists who emerged from the underground youth subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, punk rock and hip hop - the likes of Ed Templeton (above), Shepard Fairey (whose art was recently shown in London - see below), Harmony Korine and Mike Mills.

Directed by Joshua Leonard, it explores the remarkable impact that this group of influential outcasts have had on contemporary culture. How, for instance, does a young guy learning to skate become an internationally renowned photographer?

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Categories Art Film Photography Tags Art Photography Skating

By on 13/3/08

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