UK Illustrator Russ Mills

Russ Mills. This incredibly talented artist from Great Britain creates amazing masterpieces, possessing his own and unique technique.

On his technique: “For my Graphic work I compile as much source material as possible in the form of textures, random marks and scribbles etc and scan it all, the primary image is drawn and also scanned. I then manipulate the constituent parts on the computer, I keep the amount of layers to a bare minimum so the results are as spontaneous as possible. I don’t use any filters at all to keep the ‘digital’ nature of the image to a minimum.”

Paper Dresses for L’Officiel

Paper dresses created by Russian creative agency “Doberman”. This futuristic collection is for L’Officiel July/August 2009 issue.
Photographer and stylist: Ilya Plotnikov and Alexander Zakharov from studio “Doberman”.

Photo-Art: Kimiko Yoshida

Kimiko Yoshida Biography

1963 Born: Tokyo, Japan

1986 Bachelor of Arts, Faculty of Literature, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan

1995 Tokyo College of Photography, Japan

1996 École nationale supérieure de la photographie, Arles, France

1999 Studio national des arts contemporains, Le Fresnoy, France

2005 1st Price for the “Self-portrait” INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS, New York, USA

Official Site – Kimiko Yoshida

Kimiko Yoshida was born in Tokyo in 1963. She lives in Paris now.  Her refined, fantastic, paradoxical self-portraits are from the series “Single brides”. The fragments, interlacing, tell about the same: about a position of woman in Japan. In childhood the enormous impression was effected on Kimiko by her mother’s history, who became acquainted with the husband only on the day of wedding.  As for her own history, in 1995 she literally eloped from Japan and settled in France. She learned a new language and chosen another road in life – devoted herself to the creativity. Went to school of photography Ecole Nationale in Arles on the south of France. Then she began to work in studio Le Fresnoy in the north of country.

It have been two years since Kimiko Yoshida engaged herself with the “vague self-portraits” series. Such themes like mixing of cultures, transformations of life and even, possibly, eliminations of national distinctions. The varied metamorphoses of her own personality show that unicity disappears and individuality destructs.

Her photos are bright squares of a large format. Each photo tells the story. In these works it is possible to find the illusion of the Bamboo princess, the heroine of the known Japanese legend. An enormous emotional charge is hidden in separate details like in veil and autumn tones. Mouth expresses a desire, a bend of hand is a resistance.
Every color has it’s own value:
- blue is a symbol of ice, as well as a symbol of death and eternity;
- white is a symbol of purity, but also a symbol of banality and search of love;
- yellow is a symbol of sun and light;
- red is a symbol of passion, pain, blood and organic materials.

In works of Kimiko Yoshida it is possible to discover dispatches to the essay “In Praise of Shadows” by the Japanese writer Tanizaki Junichiro. Kimiko Yoshida in her photos makes an accent on what Tanizaki would call a desire “to give a depth to the shadows”, as in painting: “it is another more refined surface on which weak and unsteady light can play”. Kimiko Yoshida never uses a direct light, and always looks for that something special, which usually exists in the Japanese houses. Her “brides” dwell in the mixed and multicultural world, which was created by time and space. She uses Hasselblad camera with a 120-mm lens.

source: prophotos

(Self-portraits bellow…)