My favorite thing about photography is that I’m always discovering new stuff and my taste is just never fully developed. I can imagine that being a photography critic is quite a drag because you’ve seen everything before and there are very few surprises for you in photography. I found Jan Von Hollenben over on Photo Rank and every time I show someone these photos I get the same reaction… Oh. My. God. Photography is just awesome like that sometimes.
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Reminds me a bit of the work of Robin Rhode: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/robin_rhode/
(it’s difficult to find a good representation of his stuff online, but he does very dynamic shot-from-above stuff).
this is so great. I love low tech (or no tech) creative techniques.
thanks for this one APE.
It’s been a long time since I saw new work this refreshing.
Stupidly thought that surely you’d lead with this one:
http://stupidphotographer.blogspot.com/2007/11/phtgrphr.html
I’m disappointed – I’ve been waiting for a post “Oh.My.God. – Bruce DeBoer. Hmmmm – I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer.
Jan Von Hollenben – Well done, I like your thinking.
He’s a great find. Other would be wise to take a cue from his website where photos load quickly, navigation is intuitive, and image sets have not been put into categories with titles such as:
Portraits
Portraits 2
Lifestyle (ugh)
Landscapes (duh)
Personal Projects (sigh)
Commercial (yuck)
As an off-topic aside: I once helped friends Barbara and Galen Rowell with a naming/numbering hierarchy plan for organizing their analog image files at their Mountain Light studio. We laughed so hard because over the years his folders with pages of slides had been filed as:
Yosemite
Yosemite winter
Yosemite summer
Yosemite again…
Oops, I meant to write “Others would be wise…” as in:
If you miss one typo, all the others will know.
Down is Just the Bottom of the Page…
Jan von Holleben creates images of gravity-defying joy using, er, the floor: This one’s great, too. And, it’s not as clever, but I could not possibly like this series any more than I do. (Via A Photo Editor.)……
I felt the same refreshing, childlike, awe while looking through his entire site. The simplicity, fun, and enjoyment shows greatly in his work. Amazing! Great find, thank you very much for posting.
Well I know we are all reminded of someone, so mine is Michel Gondry films. Great stuff, Michel and Jan.
Come on over and check out his new work “It’ll Happen Here” in 180 magazine http://180mag.ca/ this month.
You’ll find his “Dreams of Flying” story here: http://180mag.ca/0702/holleben/holleben.html
I love his work, I “get it” immediately.
Kim Taylor
cool. a really good friend of mine gets featured on APE, and deservedly so.
just to get a plug in, Jan and some of the members of Photodebut (the london based collective that jan helped form) are doing a presentation at the Photographers Gallery in London this thursday night, 7pm onwards. there’ll be drinks and stuff afterwards….
you can also see Jan’s work at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.
nice work APE for picking out Jan.
I had seen these a while ago, and my first impression was these would be so great if he just took them to the next level!
Do this, than do that and they would be so cool. Then I looked again and saw that they are perfect for what they are……
Great work!
Simplistic, yet so bloody effective. Thanks for sharing…
Glad to hear that you like Jan von Holleben’s work so much! My gallery – Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art, New York – has represented Jan for several years now and the response has been gratifying. You can check out more of the work from this series, see photographs from his most recent, Fall 2007, exhibition at our Chelsea space, and get more information on what he’s been up to by visiting our website at http://www.phhfineart.com.
I hope you’ll find work by some of our other artists that you like, as well.
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