The painting above is the first official portrait of Kate Duchess of Cambridge (formerly known as Kate Middleton). When it was unveiled to the public earlier this month, art critics around the world bashed it for making Kate look ghostly and much older than she actually is. On the receiving end of all the criticism has been British artist Paul Emsley, the man who photographed Kate Middleton and then turned one of the photos into the painting seen above. Read more…
Check out this portrait photograph of Swedish artist Fredrik Saker. It’s actually a self-portrait that Saker painted by hand. While we’ve seen and shared photo-realistic drawings before, Saker’s came up with a clever way of validating his photo’s realism: he managed to have it approved as his drivers license photo. Read more…
Did you know that some of the most famous master painters from centuries past may have actually used camera “technology” to aid them in creating their masterpieces? According to the hotly debated Hockney-Falco thesis, some well-known artists likely used rudimentary camera obscura rooms as a tool — essentially “tracing” parts of their work. Read more…
The National Gallery in London, the world’s 4th most visited art museum, is currently holding its first major exhibition of photography, titled, “Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present.” Andrew Graham-Dixon of The Telegraph has published a review of the show, and has some strong opinions on photography’s place in the art world:
The truth is that very few photographers have ever produced images with the weight of thought and feeling found in the greatest paintings. The camera is certainly an artistic tool, and photos can certainly be works of art. But can they be works of art of the same order as paintings? Modern critical orthodoxy would say yes. But the real answer is no. Photography lacks the depth and heft, the thinking sense of touch, that painting possesses.
That is why the greatest images of the last 150 years– the images people argue about, contest, return to again and again – are not photographs but paintings
Artist Federico Pietrella has a clever and impressive way of “printing” his photographs. After selecting one he wants to use, Pietrella recreates it by hand using nothing but a date stamp and ink. Pointillism is usually done with distinct dots, but each of Pietrella’s dots are a short row of numbers indicating the current date. Read more…
Daniel Kukla is a photographer who had formal training in biological and anthropological sciences. His educational background plays a major part of his artistic practice, and this can be seen in his clever project titled, The Edge Effect. Read more…
Hawaii-based photographer Christy Lee Rogers specializes in creating dreamlike photos of people underwater. Her project Reckless Unbound shows people swirling around one another while wearing colorful outfits. The photos are reminiscent of the paintings of old Baroque masters, who would often paint people floating around in heavenly realms. Read more…
If there was such thing as a Photoshop disaster in real life, this story would probably qualify. An elderly woman in the city of Zaragoza, Spain recently took it upon herself to restore an 19th-century fresco of Jesus that had been deteriorating over the past few years. As you can see from the before and after photos above, the results weren’t pretty. Read more…
A 22-year-old Houston artist named Uriel Landeros made news this past week after walking into Houston’s Menil Collection museum and vandalizing a priceless 1929 Picasso painting titled Woman in a Red Armchair. A fellow museum patron captured cell phone footage of Landeros spray painting the word “conquista” onto the painting using a stencil. The painting was rushed to the museum’s conservation lab for an emergency restoration, and Landeros was just arrested and charged with two third-degree felonies. Read more…
Photographer Josef Fischnaller shoots portraits that recreate famous paintings by the Old Masters, often including some humorous modern day elements in the scene. The photos remind us of the “Remake” contest photos that we shared a couple months ago. Read more…
![Photography Lacks the Depth and Heft [...] That Painting Possesses photovspainting](http://www.petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2012/11/photovspainting.jpg "photovspainting")
