Brendon Burton Captures Moments of Nostalgia and Wonder in North America’s Most Isolated Places

Image © Brendon Burton

Growing up in an isolated community, photographer Brendon Burton developed an eye for the way decaying buildings nestle into the landscape or punctuate vast expanses. Now based primarily in Portland, Oregon, he travels around the U.S. in search of rural places that are culturally worlds apart from major urban centers, seemingly existing on their own timelines. Like his series Thin Places, his recent body of work titled Interstices—to which some of these images belong—emphasizes the notion of liminality, advancing time, and spaces for passing through.

Utilizing drones to achieve dramatic aerial views in addition to intimate perspectives shot from ground level, Burton highlights the relationships between the built environment and wilderness, ancestry and life cycles, and presence and local traditions.

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Fluorescent Photographs by Tom Leighton Highlight the Remarkable Complexities of Plants After Dark

Image © Tom Leighton

“Plants are incredible stores of energy,” says photographer Tom Leighton, whose fluorescent-tinged images of foliage highlight the incredible night life of plants in his ongoing Variegation series. He explores the detailed colors and textures of leaves and stems, accentuating an important counterpart to the complex daytime process of photosynthesis, which creates chemical energy and oxygen from sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. “After the sun fades, the process of photosynthesis stops and respiration begins,” he says. “Plants begin to burn their stored sugars and breathe back in some of the precious oxygen they have created.”

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A Stunning Timelapse of Ice Melting Ties the Climate Crisis to an ‘Eternal Spring’

Melting mounds of snow, icicles dripping from gutters, and morning frost quickly disappearing from the grass are all telltale signs that spring is near. But what happens when the landscape is suspended in a perpetual state of thaw not tied to the change of the season? Christopher Dormoy wades into this question in “Eternal Spring,” a mesmerizing short film that magnifies the properties of melting ice.

Shot with a macro lens, the timelapse zeroes in small frozen pockets that appear like cavernous landscapes and vast tundras, tying the film to its large-scale concerns. “Melting ice is beautiful and symbolizes spring, but it can also symbolize the problematic aspect of our climate,” the Montreal-based art director says.

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Photographer admits prize-winning image was AI-generated

Boris Eldagsen’s award-winning picture.

A photographer is refusing a prestigious award after admitting to being a “cheeky monkey” and generating the prize-winning image using artificial intelligence.

The German artist Boris Eldagsen revealed on his website that he was not accepting the prize for the creative open category, which he won at the Sony world photography awards.

The winning photograph depicted two women from different generations in black and white.

In a statement on his website, Eldagsen, who studied photography and visual arts at the Art Academy of Mainz, conceptual art and intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and fine art at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication in Hyderabad, said he “applied as a cheeky monkey” to find out if competitions would be prepared for AI images to enter. “They are not,” he added.

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Uncovering the Photographer Behind Arshile Gorky’s Most Famous Painting

Photograph of Arshile Gorky, “The Artist and His Mother” (c. 1926-42) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (photo © and by Carolina Miranda, used with permission)

Around 1911, mother and son Shushan and Vostanig Adoian visited a local photography studio in Van, a heavily Armenian city near the eastern border of the Ottoman Empire. There, they sat for a portrait, one they might send to Setrag Adoian, her husband and his father, in the United States. The absence of that man from the portrait is palpable. It is but the first of many absences and disappearances to disturb a photograph that in time became a memorial object and then artistic source material. Indeed, the portrait seems almost haunted by its own disappearance, its fading as an autonomous object with its own particular orbit and history as it is overtaken by these other narratives. But could autonomy be regained, and a link to its own world reforged?

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Aerial Photographs by Kevin Krautgartner Capture the Magnificent Power of Crashing Waves Above Hawaii’s Banzai Pipeline

Image © Kevin Krautgartner

Nothing puts the enormous power of nature into perspective quite like the energy of our planet’s oceans. On a reef off of the North Short of O’ahu, Hawaii, some of the world’s most famously thrilling and dangerous waves present enticing conditions for surfing in an area known as the Banzai Pipeline. Photographer Kevin Krautgartner celebrates the mesmerizing, barrel-shaped breakers in Pipeline, a series of aerial images highlighting the formidable force of water crashing and whorling along the shore.

“Personally, waves always get my attention when I’m close to a coastline or the ocean,” Krautgartner says. “For me, they are especially unique because they are a natural phenomenon that can create a sense of awe and wonder… creating a rhythmic pattern that can be both soothing and exhilarating.” Going beyond documentation, he focuses on details like structure and form, examining the elemental interactions between light, water, and air.

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Sun-Kissed Memories of Ipanema Beach

From Sandra Cattaneo Adorno, Águas de Ouro, Radius Books

As someone who was raised in the Caribbean, I seldom think about the beach. Perhaps because I’m surrounded by concrete at every corner of New York City, I’d rather take in what’s in front of me than daydream about my past. But if I daydream, I’m confronted by the gap between this image that reminds me of home and narrow outside perceptions of what that place is — my own life experiences are at odds with the idealized images propagated by the tourism industry. The perfectly retouched photos of shorelines I often recognize, which I encounter digitally, aren’t what I long for, what I recall in the splashes of my memory. I can’t feel the heat from these photographs.

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Paul Nicklen Photographs the Colorado River as It Etches Itself Like Veiny Branches into the Landscape

“Arterial Poetry”

It is a common understanding in writing studies that to recount a disastrous event in literal and graphic detail may damper the purpose of the story by pushing the reader away. In order to elicit experiential feelings, writers often learn to employ tools and strategies such as metaphor, poeticism, and structure. This could also be understood as an exercise in empathy because rather than force the reader to feel by summarizing the experience for them, the writer creates an environment where one can reach for closeness and camaraderie in their own ways.

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Explosive Photos by Ray Collins Capture the Ocean’s Mercurial Nature As It Erupts in Extravagant Bursts

“Matter”

Ever fickle, the ocean and all its excitable energy provide endless fodder for Ray Collins (previously). The Australian photographer, who is based in Wollongong, is known for his dramatic images that capture the diversity of textures and forms that emerge from the water. Waves undulate into scaly walls, fine mists erupt in the air, and surges turn in on themselves, creating eerie, patterned tunnels. Each image emphasizes the capricious nature of the water, which Collins shares as the impetus for his practice. “I’m fortunate that my subject, the ocean, is never the same.

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Double-Exposure Photos by Christoffer Relander Superimpose Everyday Scenes onto Human Silhouettes

Image © Christoffer Relande

Spontaneity, honesty, and a desire for experimentation are at the heart of an ongoing project by  Christoffer Relander, whose dreamy compositions masterfully blend portraiture and nature. 365 Days of Double Exposure is Relander’s practice of documenting life around him, whether that be the mundane scenes inside his home or the landscapes and people he encounters. Like other daily projects in a similar vein, the goal is to create no matter the circumstances, and Relander carries a pocket-sized Ricoh GRIII with him to capture impromptu moments throughout the day.

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