Irene Kung's Dream-like Photos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gOVPOYPmes Taking inspiration from everything that surrounds us, Irene Kung creates haunting photographs that inspire a pause for reflection and meditation. The Swiss photographer transforms urban spaces and buildings in cities across the world, as she takes snapshots where tourist take pictures but turns these daytime shots into night. She also separates her subjects from any surroundings, and illuminating them in such a way that adds the dream-like quality. When asked what concepts she aims to emphasize her images, she answers:

Silence and immobility. To stop and see, feel, think and dream. I aim to respond to people’s inner being at this time when our world is rushing towards decline. The void. Unfilled space, the darkness around the subject is more important than the subject itself. Today there is too much of everything around us, and I concentrate on elimination and the creation of voids. Empty space offers the chance of giving time a dimension.

Kung works with Michael Goedhuis Gallery in London and Valentina Bonomo in Rome.

Around the World with the Moon

For the past 10 years, when Leonid Tishkov packs for travel, he doesn't only bring his suitcase but also his own private moon! What began as a single installation of the glowing moon, bringing surrealist artist Rene Magritte's "The Sixteenth of September (Le seize septembre)" to life, turned into a life long project for the Russian physician turned avant-garde artist Tishkov.

Tishkov's on going "Private Moon" is a series of stylized, sentimental photographs of himself, wearing his late father's cloak, with a large illuminated crescent moon in the strangest, most unexpected places around the world. Influenced by Russian folk tales, Tishkov sees this project as a life performance where the moon is a shining point that brings people together from different cultures and countries. It gives fairytale and poetry in our world.

The world is beautiful around us, you just illuminate it with the light of poetry! And for me, the light of the moon is the perfect poetry.

Tishkov started the journey from a familiar place, his home. In the first pictures you see the artist's country house, the bed where he sleeps and writes poetry. Later he went to  places such as France, Taiwan, China, Kazakhstan, and the list goes on. Join this lonely poet on his global tour.