One-Storied America photographed by Christopher Mccurdy
Christopher Mccurdy - a man with a camera, fixing the moments of a one-storied American ordinary life.
Christopher Mccurdy - a man with a camera, fixing the moments of a one-storied American ordinary life.
In the heart of Brooklyn, Hayden Clay redefines the art scene with his mesmerising take on "feel-good surrealism." Through his expertise in digital art, he masterfully blends elements of nature with the boundless realms of imagination. His pieces, often centred around water, landscapes and clouds, serve as gateways to a world where the line between dreams and reality fades.
Clay’s art offers a surreal exploration of nature, inviting introspection. Hayden’s freelance work inspires with transformative surreal visuals.
Hayden has recently unveiled his latest NFT generative art drop on Foundation, titled "Strange Clouds." This collection marks the second chapter of the Strange Clouds series, showcasing a captivating array of generative 3D artworks. Each piece in the collection presents a unique cloud formation, inviting viewers to explore the infinite variations of shapes, colours, and patterns. Inspired by clouds’ ever-changing and generative essence, this project continues Hayden's exploration of the natural world through a digital lens, offering a fresh and innovative perspective on the art of surrealism.
Alizé Jireh’s art spans photography, videography, and music. Through her lens, she captures vulnerability, resilience, and authenticity. Her work invites viewers to engage with the world intimately.
Alizé’s art illuminates the beauty of everyday life. With attention to detail and emotional sensitivity, she creates works that deeply resonate with audiences and highlight our shared humanity.
Visual artist Mia Novakova uses the ambiguity of liminal spaces to create mysterious and thought-provoking artworks, absorbing viewers to interpret and question the state of reality. Wrapping objects is not new in art, but the way Mia does it triggers the concept of form cleared of function, meaning and time.
Take a journey into the world of man, where exaggerated fantasies are brought to life through cinematic storytelling, shedding light on the pressing issues of gender inequality and sexualised exploitation of women.
This narrative explores men's fantasies and the roles of women forced to fulfil them. All the featured dreams are often anything but simple. Some seek praise, others crave dominance, some project issues linked to mother-son relationships, and some even reduce women to mere objects. Our goal was to illuminate this sexualised and objectifying world set within the unconventional backdrop of a brothel.
Every male fantasy can be instantly gratified with a button if money can be spared. It's a disorienting space, one you yearn to escape, much like the desire to break free from the constraints of societal roles and the preconceived notions about women that many of us struggle with every day.
SVOYA brand Antonina Vlasenko @svoyasvoya @smetanina__satan
Cast:
Dima Speranskiy @speranskiy
Roman Kyandzhaliev @Kyandzhaliev_ro
Asya Rylova @asyarylova
Leonid Kim @leoleoleoleokim
Aizhan Kulchukova @yes.aiji
Artemii Demidov @Enot_Comandir
Sassha Nachalas @sashanachalas
Irina Belskaia @irinabel_3108
David Gabuniya @davidgabuniya_
Fedor Polyakov @fedor.polyakov_
Nina Zvezdina @ninawww
Magina Xanki @xankiii
Maria Pronin @barkobulka
Director/ Idea/ Script – Maria Pronin @barkobulka
Director of Photography / Colorist / Edit/ Music – Yaroslav Dementev @deyaros
Art Director – Archi Manouche @arhi_manouche
Producer – Nikita Prokofyev @doprokofyev
Assistant Producer – Kato Litvinyuk @3_outsiders_spells, Anastasiia Kiseleva @kiselevva
Florist – Daria Sidorova @dasha.seed
MUA – Aizhan Kulchukova @yes.aiji
Production Assistant – Olich Aleha @lelkac
Helper – Kseniia Lavrova @_lavrova_ks
1st AC – Ilya Mayak @terracota_warrior
2nd AC / Steadicam Operator – Danya Byakov @danyabyakov
2nd AC / DIT – Maxim Syrykh @slggr
Gaffer – Irakly Vasilkovsky @white_martlet
Lighting Technicians – Egor Podvorniy @egorpodvorniy, Yura Pomomarev @Yura_raa, Mikhail Kononov @mikofilm
Special thanks:
CHAINSSELF @chainsself
Why Not Studio @why.notstudio
Arseniy Ponomarenko @ars_ponomarenko
Elena Gerulaytis @gerulaytis.el
Andrés Gallardo Albajar, a Spanish photographer with a self-taught background, embarked on his photographic journey in 2013 by capturing the intricate interplay of silhouettes, colors, and shadows within the urban architecture of his hometown, Tallinn, Estonia.
It does not take long since his talent was mentioned by a London-based print house and ended as the “Urban Geometry” book release
As the son of architects, he spent his formative years growing up in Spain, immersed in a world of architecture books, magazines, and frequent visits to construction sites. The profound impact of this upbringing remained concealed until he stumbled upon photography as a hobby in 2012. During his childhood, art held no particular allure for him; his ambitions were firmly rooted in other pursuits.
The year 2018 marked a turning point in his journey. An invitation from a magazine led him to Seoul for an exhibition, a workshop, and a photography assignment. Then, he approached his boss, expressing the need for time off, and received an unexpected response. His boss encouraged him to follow his heart and commit fully to photography…
Designcollector network (2003) founder Arseny Vesnin, the curator of self-initiated Digital Decade (2013) art collaborations, presents artists drop in a series of "Digital Decade NFTs".
Dimitri Daniloff (b.1970, France) developed body awareness from an early age as the son of a sculptor. He has since cultivated a connection to texture and materiality. Fascinated by the numerous possibilities that technology offers, he first experimented with 4x5 view cameras and then turned to the practice of digital art. A shift, since he then started to transform his images. He now produces new scenes of everyday life by assembling raw elements with real subjects – always finding the right balance between authenticity and fiction. His campaign for PlayStation is a great example of this tension: deconstructed bodies knocking together and questioning our boundaries.
Another turning point in this creative artist’s career was his collaboration with the electronic music band Daft Punk. Producing the Virtual Girl project (2008), he integrated 3D creations into his existing pictures, thus proposing his own vision of an augmented human being. A few years later, Dimitri Daniloff started focusing on photogrammetry – a process consisting in taking measurements in space and building, through software, a 3D model from several viewpoints.
By integrating this technique into his practice, he inserted the virtual world into the real world. He created, in collaboration with plastic artist Tamal De Canela, L’humain illimité (The unlimited human), a project built around a virtual character still anchored into reality. Cleared from his corporeal envelope, the subject – half-man, half-God – pushes the limits of 2D image, body and thoughts. In this undefined space and time, borders no longer exist and humankind – and its extensions – finds its independence. The modern Prometheus owns as many masks as there are identities. “Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth”, Oscar Wilde said with irony.
Appearances press Dimitri Daniloff to question men's flaws - what still resists. And in this quest, the artist surrounds himself with other specialists: dancers, architects, decorators or even graphic designers. Highlighting the vulnerability of mankind thus turns into a political act, turning the stage around. More than a plastic artist, Dimitri Daniloff prevails as a sculptor of reality.
In January 2019 Daniloff was invited by EDF ODYSS ELEC (France) to make his first VR piece in collaboration with Ferdinand Dervieux. The piece was supposed to be presented at the VR Arles Festival but will be presented in an other event linked to VR Arles Festival later in 2020.
In 2020, Designcollector’s founder Arseny Vesnin invited Dimitri to take a part in Digital Decade SE 2020 - an online exhibition on the Sedition Art Platform.
Series of six 1/1 NFT drops
A small, intimate room that protects us from the vastness. As "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer, we inhabit the space, lost in our thoughts. But in this room we are not lost, we inhabit the virtual world, with a space that protects us. A virtual space, which is also real, two universes that meet, that confront each other. Above all they complement each other, the virtual space does not try to resemble the real world, it finds its own space, which is a combination of both. And that is the freedom of these rooms without a roof, that we can enter and exit, from both worlds, as if they were one.
And we can penetrate them, they are not photos, they are rooms, they are spaces to enter, to become part of the image. Become shells, like these people, like these characters, be statues, rigid, colourless, be bodies, sensual, Greek, perfect, imperfect, full of defects, like existence itself, but we multiply, and we can observe from different angles.
We can challenge perspectives and windows that do not fit but do not want to. Invert the process, create something, stop organizing everything and then take a picture, start with photogrammetry, to create the image with the captured elements, inventing combinations, unexpected, open to amazement. Enter everyday objects, as if they were every day.
And the looks remind us that it is the real world, that they can be confused, that we can be gods, above, we can invite the skull to a world without death, to a world where there will be no end, where our identity is fragmented, like small pieces, never erased, we leave traces of us in this virtual world.
These images, photos and non-photos, inhabit the appeared world, which does not want to be real, or virtual because it is both and that’s what gives it its strength, its limitlessness and its uniqueness. A universe where flying is allowed. Where originality dwells, an authentic universe that resembles what he has dreamed of himself.
For the 2022 NFT release, Designcollector is happy to release 1 of 6 artist work (above) on our special Digital Decade NFT smart contract aimed to reveal art names we have collaborated with through our offline and online events.
Seanen Middleton is a fine art and portrait photographer from the Lake District, England. Seanen's work has been published across the globe online and we cannot stay away from his depth of visual storytelling
Hetaera Psappha is a video artist born in Moscow in the waning years of the Soviet era. Working all around the world, Lisa Minaeva (the artist’s real name) creates her wordless portraits in various places. Having started her project in London in 2012, she gathered over 100 portraits of artists, poets, musicians, and other people of different professions and backgrounds. After ten years of filming portraits, she feels more interested in it than ever.
A French actress sitting topless in a bathtub in Moscow; a young Indonesian woman looking at the camera with eyes full of tears in a hot Belgrade apartment; a celebrated Russian rapper squinting in the sun on a famous Saint Petersburg rooftop after an acoustic gig; a British painter, frozen in his chair, looking as if he’s about to attack – the Blossom of Silence project counts endless faces and hours of quiet contemplation. Being able to stop and look into another person’s eyes is a rare gift in a time of rapid news and information, and the lo-fi image created with a MiniDV camera helps the artist clear it of the filters we got used to so easily thanks to fashion magazines and Instagram. At times, the picture shakes and interrupts, and zooms in and out: leaving the footage “rough” is the artist’s committed position.
Initial idea was to “create a collection of the most beautiful people’s portraits”, and, therefore, remake a famous Andy Warhol work. However, the goal changed fast as Hetaera Psappha realized “beautiful” does not always mean “interesting to silently communicate with”, and vice versa. According to the artist, the key to “interest” stays unclear after all these years: while some portraits are more loved by the audience than others, she never knows beforehand if a portrait is going to work out well or turn out to be boring and “soulless”. It depends on many factors, where the openness of the model often stays the most important one.
Among many famous and unknown faces, one stands out – Alina happens to be the only person Hetaera Psappha filmed more than once. From the very first shooting, she became the artist’s muse, whom she decided to film every year. The colourful and unexpected evolution of a teenage girl through the troubles and transformations of her adolescence years is a curious experience, “a project within a project”. And it is not the only one – in 2016 Lisa created a special collection Silent Poets, especially for Poetronica festival of contemporary poetry, sound art and video art.
As Hetaera Psappha says, filming portraits with no words doesn’t just help her rest after working with texts and words, which is the other big part of her life as a poet and scriptwriter. It helps her feel, build and share with her audience connections, which cannot be broken by borders, political systems, religions, classes and backgrounds. In such a way, when watching her portraits, everyone is free to build an imaginary connection with any of her models and try to read the mystery hidden in their eyes. After all, the eyes are the mirror of the soul, as long as one suggests it exists. And if it does, observing them is a useful and enriching practice.
“Intentionally Wes Anderson” if you want to summarise Vaughn Meadows body of work. Or maybe you will hear Salinger’s lines while watching his mellow-coloured, pastoral photography. And if I was you I’d defo visit artist’s links and even purchase few works as NFTs
The Dutch proverb “a Jan Steen household” originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work. I am the oldest of nine children and now the mother of three. As Steen’s personal narratives of family life depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and real.
The stress, the chaos, and the need to simultaneously escape and connect are issue that I investigate in this body of work. We live in a culture where we are both “child centered” and “self-obsessed.” The struggle between living in the moment versus escaping to another reality is intense since these two opposites strive to dominate. Caught in the swirl of soccer practices, play dates, work, and trying to find our way in our “make-over” culture, we must still create the space to find ourselves. The expectations of family life have never been more at odds with each other. These issues, as well as the relationship between the domestic landscape of the past and present, are issues I have explored in these photographs. I believe there are moments that can be found throughout any given day that bring sanctuary. It is in finding these moments amidst the stress of the everyday that my life as a mother parallels my work as an artist, and where the dynamics of family life throughout time seem remarkably unchanged. As an artist and as a mother, I believe life’s most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.
Pete Halvorsen is a photographer living and working in Manhattan Beach, California. His work combines fine art, travel, and commercial photography.
Welcome to the other side of the mirror - the world of Ada’s Crow mastermind. We are pretty sure you will be amazed by the conceptual photography she creates on the daily basis leaving no doubts she is next NFT OG star
Peyman Naderi is a young Persian contemporary fine art and portrait photographer. As he began his career as a professional photographer, his first motto was to create original and creative photos through which his own perceptions of the world and art could be understood. Also, he is eager to represent a unique way of looking at various concepts in the world.
Carpoolers is an acclaimed documentary photo series and self-published project from Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena started in 2011. Concerned with the neoliberal policymaking in the city of Monterrey and rapid housing expansions on the outskirts of the city, Cartagena critically documents the fissures between blue-collar urban centres and the lack of infrastructure connecting the suburban overgrowth.
“From the vantage point of a highway overpass, the photographer has vividly and repetitiously documented the contract workers and tradesmen who hitch rides in the back of the trucks that will take them to that day’s worksite. As many as eleven labourers are seen at a time in open beds scattered with equipment and commercial goods; many sleep side-by-side, perhaps as strangers to each other. Provoking in its apparent ubiquitousness, this fiercely conceptual series raises concerns regarding the failure of urbanism and neoliberalism in Mexico; its ecological ramifications; and social and economic stratification—within the confines of the image itself even the driver and owner of the vehicle, concealed in the cabin and unseen to us, holds a superior status to the labourers who are exposed to the elements.“
“Alexandre Souêtre is a photographer and art director currently living in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Paris, France. Alex has a minimalist approach to design and an immaculate eye for tone, often playing with scale to suspend lone figures in mid air or to encase them against a clean, concrete background.”
“Alex’s work is at it’s finest when depicting anonymous silhouettes skating alone against remote urban backdrops. The graphic lines, sweeping shadows and graffiti elements that he chooses to include in his images help to create an atmosphere and an energy that both excites and intrigues. It is because of this that you don’t need to be a fanatical skate fan to appreciate his images”
Self-taught Moroccan photographer experimented with various creative fields before landing on photography. He draws inspiration from family and heritage. Despite heavy regulations on crypto in his homeland, Ismail was able to mint NFTs while travelling, they are worth to view and support on Foundation app
Tye Martinez is a multidisciplinary artist currently based out of Bellingham, WA. Focusing on the connection between emotions and various art forms, Tye aims to mend the preconceived notion that feeling different is not normal. Speaking of all emotions should not be considered taboo, and art can be such an excellent gateway to help normalise what it’s like to feel down or different.
Saint-Petersburg based digital artist working mainly with self-portrait photography manipulation by delivering new captivating image every week (or at least she promised that :)
The face behind the alias of moodydarkroom is photographer and artist Oswaldo Cepeda. Originally from a small town in Wisconsin, Oswaldo decided to pursue his passion of art and felt that in order to do so properly, he needed to be in a new environment. Given the sprawling hub of opportunity that Southern California offers, Oswaldo decided to move to San Diego, where he is now based out of and calls home.
Oswaldo’s main focus is portraiture; however, his portfolio also showcases his passion for digital art. His portrait work is unique, featuring the abstract lighting techniques that he is widely known for. This ultimately sets his work apart from typical portraiture, often being described as other worldly, ethereal, and poignantly emotional. He uses his work to convey feelings that cannot be put into words and strives to demonstrate the raw emotions of human nature.