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Group Show 70: Under the Sun and the Moon Group Show 69: Photo for Non-Majors (part 2) Group Show 69: Photo for Non-Majors (part 1) Group Show 68: Four Degrees Group Show 67: Embracing Stillness Group Show 66: La Frontera Group Show 65: Two Way Lens Group Show 64: Tropes Gone Wild Group Show 63: Love, Actually Group Show 62: 100% Fun Group Show 61: Loss Group Show 60: Winter Pictures Group Show 59: Numerology Group Show 58: On Death Group Show 57: New Psychedelics Group Show 56: Source Material Group Show 55: Year in Reverse Group show 54: Seeing Sound Group Show 53: On Beauty Group Show 52: Alternative Facts Group Show 51: Future Isms Group Show 50: 'Roid Rage Group Show 48: Winter Pictures Group Show 47: Space Jamz group show 46: F*cked Up group show 45: New Jack City group show 44: Radical Color group show 43: TMWT group show 42: Occultisms group show 41: New Cats in Art Photography group show 40: #Latergram group show 39: Tough Turf P. 2/2 group show 39: Tough Turf P. 1/2

Humble Arts Foundation

New Photography
Stories and interviews
Submit
Info
Subscribe About Contact The Team
Online Exhibitions
Group Show 70: Under the Sun and the Moon Group Show 69: Photo for Non-Majors (part 2) Group Show 69: Photo for Non-Majors (part 1) Group Show 68: Four Degrees Group Show 67: Embracing Stillness Group Show 66: La Frontera Group Show 65: Two Way Lens Group Show 64: Tropes Gone Wild Group Show 63: Love, Actually Group Show 62: 100% Fun Group Show 61: Loss Group Show 60: Winter Pictures Group Show 59: Numerology Group Show 58: On Death Group Show 57: New Psychedelics Group Show 56: Source Material Group Show 55: Year in Reverse Group show 54: Seeing Sound Group Show 53: On Beauty Group Show 52: Alternative Facts Group Show 51: Future Isms Group Show 50: 'Roid Rage Group Show 48: Winter Pictures Group Show 47: Space Jamz group show 46: F*cked Up group show 45: New Jack City group show 44: Radical Color group show 43: TMWT group show 42: Occultisms group show 41: New Cats in Art Photography group show 40: #Latergram group show 39: Tough Turf P. 2/2 group show 39: Tough Turf P. 1/2
Infinite Essence: "James" 2018 © Mikael Owunna

Infinite Essence: "James" 2018 © Mikael Owunna

Astro-Black Mythology: In Conversation with Mikael Owunna

Mikael Owunna discusses the richness of his photo series Infinite Essence

"The trope of the Black body as a site of death is everywhere," writes Mikael Owunna. "Being gunned down by police officers, drowning and washing up on the shores of the Mediterranean, starving and suffering in award-winning photography," these images permeate mainstream news, our social media feeds and are a constant stream of visual trauma. For Owunna, these images became a catalyst to transfigure the Black body from a site of death and state violence to transcendent eternal beings.

In 2017, Owunna began Infinite Essence, a series of glowing, ethereal photographs that elevate Black bodies to the cosmos. Owunna paints his models with fluorescent paint and uses his engineering background to enhance a standard flash with an ultraviolet bypass filter rendering only ultraviolet light. The resulting images expose viewers to what they might not otherwise see: a metaphor for the beauty, joy, and power of Black life that is often omitted from popular narratives. Infinite Essence is a haven – a safe space from centuries of systemic oppression. Owunna's muses are floating, content, and infinitely secure.

I spoke with Owunna to learn more.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Mikael Owunna

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PostedSeptember 24, 2020
AuthorJon Feinstein
CategoriesArtists
TagsInfinite Essence, Mikael Owunna, contemporary portraiture, African cosmology, new photography, astro black mythology
“There’s No Such Thing As Normal.” Taken from Carnal Knowledge, Prestel, 2020.  Photo © Elizabeth  Renstrom

“There’s No Such Thing As Normal.” Taken from Carnal Knowledge, Prestel, 2020.
Photo © Elizabeth Renstrom

This Photobook is the Sex Education You Missed in High School

Zoe Ligon and Elizabeth Renstrom's new book Carnal Knowledge (Prestel, September 2020) updates and normalizes sex education - a topic that is still sensitive in 21st century America. For many Americans, it’s a subject that was excluded from the core curriculum and is vital to our overall health and happiness.

Longtime friends Zoe Ligon and Elizabeth Renstrom are a writer and photographer dream team. Ligon brings years of experience as a sex educator, journalist, and performer to this project in seven sharply-crafted chapters that address everything you've ever wanted to know about sex. This ranges from the basic human anatomy and the importance of healthy relationships to sex toys and supporting sex worker rights. Renstrom's vivid, 90s aesthetic-influenced photographs complement the hilariously frank text.

Without further delay…

Roula Seikaly in Conversation with Zoe Ligon and Eizabeth Renstrom

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PostedSeptember 17, 2020
AuthorRoula Seikaly
CategoriesPhotobooks, Artists, Art News, Galleries
Tagssex education, Elizabeth Renstrom, Zoe Ligon, sex ed, Carnal Knowledge book, 2020 Photobooks, photobooks, Prestel Publishers
© Kimberly Acebo Arteche

© Kimberly Acebo Arteche

Using Art to Understand Grief and Personal History

Kimberley Acebo Arteche's Palo Maiden reflects the artist's research of indigenous Filipino art forms and her embrace of BDSM practices in overcoming trauma.

Artist and activist-educator Kimberley Acebo Arteche is committed to decolonizing art institutional practices and foregrounding emerging Asian Pacific and BIPOC artists. A San Franciscan by way of Baltimore, Maryland, Arteche's earliest creative curiosities included searches for indigenous Philippine art on the then-burgeoning internet. Seeking context and connection to her far-away family, Arteche began to understand colonialism's insidious effect as manifest in racist and misogynistic portrayals of Pinay women.

I got to know Kim while curating the 2018 exhibition Betweenscapes with Dr. Kathy Zarur. Since then, I've hoped to speak with her about what motivates her creatively. When I saw early selections from Palo Maiden previewed on Instagram, I reached out to Kim to learn more about this new series. In Humble Art's second video interview, Kim and I chat about grief as an underlying and dimensional theme in her work, BDSM practices as a vehicle for healing, and what she's working on during quarantine.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Kimberley Acebo Arteche

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PostedSeptember 10, 2020
AuthorRoula Seikaly
TagsKim Acebo, Kimberly Acebo Arteche, Roula Seikaly, Artist Interviews
Choose You This Day Whom Ye Will Serve © Ryan Frigilana

Choose You This Day Whom Ye Will Serve © Ryan Frigilana

Visions of Eden and The American Dream

Ryan Frigillana’s latest series and self-published photobook Visions of Eden takes an open-ended visual journey through his family’s experience as first-generation Filipino immigrants in the United States.

New York-based photographer and writer Ryan Frigillana sequences his own photographs among archival family photos, video stills, letters from his grandparents in the Philippines, and pages from illustrated children's Bible storybooks to understand his complicated relationship with religion and the American Dream.

Frigillana balances and re-contextualizes these images to build a poetic narrative loosely structured on the Hebrew Bible. Two wasps sitting on a decaying apple; a video still of Frigillana's older brother using a camcorder to capture his family in a bedroom mirror; underexposed family portraits from gatherings and graduations; light beaming into a dark room through cracks in an open door. Time and faith feel scattered yet comforting.

We spoke to learn more about his work and personal history.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Ryan Frigillana

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PostedSeptember 2, 2020
AuthorJon Feinstein
CategoriesPhotobooks, Artists
Tags2020 photobooks, new photography, Ryan Frigillana, photography and the American Dream, photography and religion, biblical narratives in photography
That Luscious Day © Marcy Palmer

That Luscious Day © Marcy Palmer

Gilded Photos of Flowers – an Antidote to Crisis

Marcy Palmer’s photographs remind us to pause and look for moments of beauty amid turmoil, heartache, and uncertainty.

Since 2018, Marcy Palmer has made lush gilded photographic prints of ferns, flowers and other botanicals – personal and delicate images that you want to hold them in your hands. These glimmering, gold-leafed prints are steeped in photo-historical references - an homage to Anna Atkins and surrealist photographic pioneer Florence Henri - yet feel contemporary and fresh.

Palmer's book You Are Eternity, You Are The Mirror, which will publish in September with Yoffy Press, continues this close and quiet encounter. While in no way a salve or encouragement to look away from a world in crisis, it’s a moment to draw breath and recharge.

We caught up to discuss the shimmer and the light.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Marcy Palmer

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PostedAugust 27, 2020
AuthorJon Feinstein
CategoriesArtists, Photobooks, Publications, Portfolio, writing on photography
Tags2020 photobooks, Anna Atkins, Gilded photographs, photographs of flowers, botanical photography, Marcy Palmer, Yoffy Press, Khalil Gibran
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Founded in 2005, Humble Arts Foundation is dedicated to supporting and promoting new art photography.