MetaFilter posts tagged with water and photography

Iceland, beauty and deja vu

paperpete — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 10:08:10 -0800

In the early 1980s, Roni Horn travelled to Iceland and lived alone for a few months in the (supposedly haunted) lighthouse at Dyrhólaey. While there, she made rocky, earthy drawings. They formed the first volume of a currently incomplete, abstract encyclopedia of the country [flash navigation] which has now progressed to include beautiful photographs of hot pools, glaciers, lava and rivers. A river's surface has appeared in different guises within a university. She has even made a library of water in a little Icelandic town. However, those currently in or near London can visit an exhibition in Tate Modern. The stars of Horn's work are water and its surfaces, time, memory - and all the echoes thereof. The overall flavour is of purity and simplicity of form. There are deeply fascinating studies of the surface of the river Thames in London, and fascinatingly deep pieces of cast, annealed optical glass. As we cannot step into the same river twice, so it is obvious that one beautiful face may not look the same if photographed a few seconds or days later. And just as we are usually very good at recognising anything familiar, time can blur our perception, and there is a chance that it may not be the same thing at all. Pairs of photos and objects explore this strange relationship between surface and substance, whether the photos are of a hot spring or a bird's head. Horn also achieves beautiful effects by cutting together similar drawings onto a single large surface, further blurring the boundaries between one thing and another. And she is very good at causing you to doubt your perception of single objects. This, for example. Thanks for looking. I hope someone enjoyed it. Please go easy - it's my first post on the blue and I didn't want to include too much, but at the same time hadn't seen anything else about the work anywhere on mefi. Further exploration is, naturally, readily available via sites already linked to, google, flickr, etc.

Earth, Water, Air and Fire Art

homunculus — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:18:40 -0800

42 Works of Modern Earth and Land Art. 42 Works of Water, Snow and Ice Art. 30 Works of Air, Sky and Wind Art. 42 Works of Fire Art and Design.

Wet photography

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:57:21 -0800

Things look good underwater.

Won't someone think of the animals.

dobbs — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 07:52:13 -0800

Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow has been linked to twice before on Metafilter. However, you can now view 10 minutes of his film as part of his Ted Talk--it's the most stunning nature footage I've ever seen. In the talk he also mentions a new concept he's developing called Animal Copyright, which I think is long overdue.

High Speed Photography

tellurian — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:16:26 -0800

Dancing droplets begets Water figures. The full set.

How Does Your Water Feel?

taz — Wed, 11 May 2005 01:51:44 -0800

The Hidden Messages in Water? Masaru Emoto claims that water has the ability "to absorb, hold, and even retransmit human feelings and emotions. Using high-speed photography, he found that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward it. Music, visual images, words written on paper, and photographs also have an impact on the crystal structure." The theory may be suspect, but the photos are beautiful.