bratislava (from slovenia to slovakia)

i was looking through the portfolio of Slovakian photographer Andrej Balco, and i was struck by his "Suburbs" project from a few years back.  these are a bit more documentary than my usual taste, but i especially liked his eye for color.

Balco points out that more than 2 million Slovaks live in giant apartment complexes, many in the suburbs of Bratislava. 

he says: "I have many times come across an opinion that living in block of flats is characterised by plaster...and grey colour. I was trying to avoid this straight off simplified view. Instead I was trying to point out the colourfulness, variety and vividity of life in the blocks of flats."

bonus subject echo:

Balco's photo of a prone man with water and a mural reminded me of Miranda Lehman's artsy, fairy-tale-like take on the same basic scene:

the pine float

"The Pine Float" is the title of Miranda Lehman's website, ghostinthewoods.com and I'm not totally sure why. but i like the sound of it (no wonder—it's also the name of a song on the Twin Peaks soundtrack...). the images above are from Set 1 on her site and there's something about their storytelling that caught my eye. i wanted to post all four of this small set because together they seem to form a sketch of a short story to me in just a few images. they're definitely fashioning fiction in some way, with their own language and symbols—and sense of a strange, dreamlike, twilight adventure. (another set has some great tropical foreboding stuff.)

i found Miranda's work while looking through the portfolios of the young artists who make up Fjord, a new collective dreamed up by Grant Willing and Alana Celii. Fjord's raison d'être is to showcase the portfolios of emerging photographers working in the internet idiom (if you will) and ultimately publish a book of their work. it's a fairly large group of photographers under 30, lots of them in their teens and early twenties. and it makes for an interesting survey of the some of the dominant themes, trends, concerns and visions of a new generation of image-makers. (i was interested to see the play between the people in the deadpan-style camp vs. the Ryan McGinley-esque youthful highjinx camp.) i imagine i'll probably be coming back to these folks again as i think about new ideas in portraiture.