The port of Essaouira, Morocco was once upon a time Africa’s busiest seaport. It was built in order to facilitate the slave traffic to Europe, and later on to the New World. It was a sort of waiting point, where slaves from all over Africa were regrouped. There they created their own kind of music called Gnawa (alternatively Gnaoua) and of which a very popular festival is hosted every year.
Also a really old photo from Abbaye de la Cambre. One of the first successful shots I’ve taken way back when I just got my first SLR – the Nikon D40, which I still have today. Went to the la Cambre Abbey in Ixelles on a sunny day to experiment with lighting, focus and the two sets of lenses I got in the camera kit: the 18-55mm and 55-200mm Nikkors. Not really much else I can say about this shot, except that it somehow always reminds me of the (scarce) Belgian summer.
Having set up my Villo subscription (free in 2010 and totally awesome by the way), I decided to finally start uploading my abandoned bikes sideproject. It is exactly what it sounds like – a collection of photos of weird/cool bicycles left or forgotten to rust away in various city streets. Feel free to send me your own pictures in case you would like me to use them..
This is how they sell music at the local market in Eivissa. A stand displays CD’s containing mixes made by the world’s biggest DJ’s for the famous local clubs. You can listen to any CD using the high quality professional headphones provided of brands like WeSC, Bose, Plantronics and Sennheiser. The checkered ones you see in the photo were made by Skullcandy. Literally everything on the island is geared towards partying and enjoying the electro scene, so it is next to impossible not to be in the going out mood!
I took this one a while ago, in the summer of 2009 in a supermarket 10 or so kilometers outside of Moscow. It really surprised me to find salted fish just sitting on a counter top in a liqueur isle of an otherwise quite civil looking supermarket. I guess that’s just something they still do in Russia. Right after a took the flash picture, the sales lady you see behind the counter got uneasy and told me that I should have warned her before shooting to give to time to check her makeup and hair. I decided not to tell her that I was more interested in the fish.
A snapshot from the old citadel of Eivissa (Ibiza) town. The citadel built by a Roman architect Juan Bautista Calvi in the mid 16th century is actually a UNESCO world heritage site. It took a bit of time and endurance to climb all the way to the top of the Dalt Vila (the high town), but the Almudaina castle and the beautiful 13th century cathedral were worth the effort. When I finally got to the summit the sun was already setting and a stage was being set up for a jazz festival. The difficult shooting conditions as well as my unsteady hands after a night of clubbing did not do much to help, but after a few tries I managed to get a crisp shot with a decent exposure level.
This poster is the result of my work for the final assignment in the first year graphic design class. The project consisted of developing and creating an advertising poster for myself, interrelating visual elements and text, which would represent me in terms of overall visual style and message. The choice of visual materials was completely free and left up to the students.
To do this I decided to go with the style of the classic propaganda poster. Having been born in the USSR, it was well suited to represent my background, while at the same time well integrating the message I wanted to convey. The imagery was created by applying a number of Photoshop filters to a real photograph of me in a tuxedo, inspired by a Bond’esque theme with a visual comic book feel to it. After that, the choice of fonts and background was obvious, producing a melange of Japanese wartime brochures, communist propaganda and the Barack Obama “Hope” poster by Shepard Fairey – also inspired by the classic “Uncle Sam wants you” series. Fairey’s example shows us just how much well designed graphic material can do to support a political of a commercial campaign.
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