Ann Mandelbaum

"Simply stated, Mandelbaum’s photographs detail close-up portions of the human body—eyes, mouths, nipples, tongues, eyebrows, necks, etc.—ambiguously and sensually presented; however, these photographs contain more than a simple figural quality. They are rigidly composed images, highly refined into mysterious prints which are the result of hours in the darkroom. Through detailed process, Mandelbaum solarized and manipulated her prints in various ways to create this textural viewing sensation."

I was introduced to this artist by Mark Ruwedel, she is absolutely amazing in creating her images and they go so far beyond the obvious nudes done so many times.

Maurizio Anzeri

Maurizio Anzeri works with found photographs, embellishing them with coloured threads to create exquisite, almost sculptural works. Anzeri transforms these straight family portraits into three-dimensional objects embued with an intense psychological dimension.

Valerie Belin

Valerie Belin’s large-scale colour photographs of eerily perfect models are beautiful and unnerving. This is the first time that Belin has used colour in her photographs and she retains her signature style of a subject deprived of context. This will be the artist’s second exhibition at Michael Hoppen Contemporary.

This new series of work is both a progression and a reversal from Belin’s black and white portraits of mannequins that appeared uncannily human taken in 2003. The models, six male and six female chosen from the new faces divisions of Parisian model agencies, look paradoxically inhuman, in spite of the added warmth and depth of colour which should make the portraits seem more “real” and less “artificial” than the mannequins. The models are pictured in profile, pouting and staring vacuously into the distance and not at the viewer. The intensity of the emptiness of their gaze, the absence of context and the flat tonality of the highly powdered skin in these photographs manipulate the viewer to believing on first glance that these are photographs of mannequins. It is only by closely inspecting the tiny imperfections around the eyes and the lips that the spell of eerie perfection is broken and the models can be pronounced “real”.

The portraits investigate the contrary notions of presence and absence, living and unanimated, evidence and withdrawal, subjects ever present in Belin’s work. The simplified, monochromatic features of the models echo avatars of virtual reality games, achieved by ridding the portraits of any shadow and light, replacing the appearance of the soft tissues of a human face with a monochromatic and diaphanous surface. This intriguing balance between abstraction and representation results in a phantom perfection.

Valérie Belin, born in 1964, lives and works in Paris. She has held numerous solo exhibitions across Europe, the US and Japan and her work is held in collections at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Bibliothéque nationale de France, Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the CCF Foundation for Photography, Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, amongst others. Belin won the Paris Photo prize in 1997, The CCF (HSBC) Foundation for Photography Prize in 2000, was short-listed for the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2004 and a new book of her work will be published by Steidl in autumn 2007. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include the Huis Marseille Foundation, Amsterdam (December 2007), the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne (2008) and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2008).

RAY CEASAR

He creates digital work from sculpture, it reminds me of Mark Ryden but with a different feel. At first I thought it was like any composite digital photo, but then learned it was actual sculpture. It's interesting to see the different ways an artist can incorporate different fields and media into digital work.

CHILD BEAUTY QUEENS! YIKES!

I smell controversy....take a load of these...
Lots of talk over these photographs about if it's "ART" or "Exploitation" ?
You be the judge...I'm not saying anything...If I judge these I would have to Judge Jill Greenberg's work as well. WE are so touchy when it comes to kids in America, but we turn the blind eye at the underage prostitution going on in our own Damn country.


Susan Anderson’s documentary portrait series, High Glitz, is shot on location at several of America’s child beauty pageants. Setting up her studio amidst the colorful spectacle, she captures the young girls at the height of their performance. Hours of preparation are spent on each child's appearance, and her camera records it all in graphic detail. Children’s pageants are a fascinating subculture, but more than anything they represent a strange microcosm of America itself. Our own values of beauty, success and glamour reflected in the dreams of thousands of young girls… Anderson is a Los Angeles-based fine art, commercial, and editorial photographer specializing in portraiture, beauty, fashion, and conceptual work. After earning her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, Anderson relocated to Los Angeles in 2001. Her editorial portrait and fashion work has appeared in a variety of magazines including, Los Angeles, People, Glamour, The Robb Report and Playboy. Her fine art work is represented by TORCH Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, California.