|* photos. Shirin Neshat.
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Shirin Neshat:
Shirin Neshat is originally from Iran, but now she lives in New York, the U.S., her works explores issues of her native society, Iran, particularly the rights of women. Her creative works communicate such ideas as loss, meaning, and memory.
|* photos. Steve McCurry
"McCurry has published books and covered areas of international and civil conflict, including Burma, Yemen, Kashmir, and Cambodia. He has won many of photojournalism’s highest awards".
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Steve McCurryProbably you've seen the famous photograph of an Afghan refugee girl with the bold look of a wolf-cub. This photo was taken by Steve McCurry, one of finest image makers. He keeps the tradition of documentary, capchuring the deep insides of the human nature. As written in
his bio: "His career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes, images which would be published around the world as among the first to show the conflict there".
After Soviet helicopters destroyed this 12-year-old girl's village, she was forced to make a two-week walk out of the dangerous mountains towards to border of Afghanistan with Pakistan. Her eyes were so expressive, telling the story without any words, all the pain, all the struggle, that the photo was published on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985. This photo was used on rugs and tattoos and became one of the most widely reproduced photos in the world.
However, this girl was found 20 years later. Here are the photos of her:
Again, her eyes... they can tell how her story continued. Unfortunately, they lost the sharp boldness, intensity and wild nature.
Wise art qoutes
- "Criticism is easy, art is difficult." - Detouches [Philippe Nericault] (1680-1754) French. Le Glorieux, 1732.
- "Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists ." - Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French writer. The Maxims of Marcel Proust, translated by Justin O'Brien, published 1948.
- "Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further." - Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet. Letter, June 24, 1907, to his wife (published in Rilke's Letters on Cézanne, 1952; translated 1985).
What is this Art Fusion about...
After September 11, the entire world became interested in the Middle East. Suddenly, what we knew before is not enough, we want to explore the problem deeper and understand the reasons.
I believe that the best way to explore any culture, nation and its traditions is through art. Art helps us to see the problems a nation faces, the way a nation sees and solves them.
As they say, at some point any artist becomes politically orientated and his works start to have political messages.
I undertake a rather interesting, yet challenging assignment: to explore the culture of the Middle East, art in particular. I would write about artist from the Middle East or artist creating their works on the issues concerning the Middle East. Fiction, documentary, books, photography, cinema... Just tune in, if you are interested!
