Old Portraits on Weathered Canvases

Working atop faded street maps, vintage National Geographic magazine covers, and decades-old stationery, London-based artist Mark Powell (previously) draws the wrinkled contours of his subject’s faces with a standard black Bic ballpoint pen. The weathered portraits of both famous and anonymous people reflect his antiquated canvases both in texture and tone as he traces the topographies of their faces across literal street maps or paper materials that have traversed the world. Powell’s drawings have grown in both scale and detail over the years, magnifying the impact and density of each piece. You can see more of his recent work on his website where he sells a number of prints and quite a few originals (via).

By recycling the envelopes, he is in some way preserving a bit of history and the tales behind the sender. He says this is why his work, which is primarily portraiture, focuses on older characters that appear to tell their own stories from the very creases and wrinkles of their faces (via).

Powell’s portraits are amusing in the way they incorporate the lines and postage stamps of the envelopes into the wrinkles and shading of each distinct face. Each portrait becomes as much about the canvas as it is about the person depicted, adding another layer to examine as the viewer gets lost in the eyes of the subject (via).

"Each portrait becomes as much about the canvas as it is about the person depicted, adding another layer to examine as the viewer gets lost in the eyes of the subject." I love that. 

The dance between our lives and the canvas and the struggle of muddling through the many layers so as not to be lost, or thrown away with yesterday's trash, and forgotten. 

This one might be my favorite.

You can see more of Mike Powell's work on his website or following his blog where will find some cool postings on Music to Draw to, Parts I and II, and other cool things.

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Portrait Photography : Martin Schoeller

I first came across portrait artist Martin Schoeller when he published his "Faces of America," and I've since seen him pop up in various places. 

What I love about his work is that, as he says on his About page, the people he is photographing "are treated with the same levels of scrutiny as the un-famous. The unknown and the too-well-known meet on a level platform that enables comparison, where a viewer’s existing notions of celebrity, value, and honesty are challenged." 

And I just love that.

You can see more of his work on identical twins, close ups of famous people who are still on the same level as the rest of us, female bodybuilders, and portraits.

"Schoeller’s close-up portraits emphasize, in equal measure, the facial features, both studied and unstudied, of his subjects— world leaders and indigenous groups, movie stars and the homeless, athletes and artists— leveling them in an inherently democratic fashion" (via).

These Algerian women were forced to remove their veils to be photographed in 1960

THEIR PORTRAITS ARE PROBLEMATIC, BUT STUNNING

If looks could kill, then a camera aimed at an unwilling subject is an instrument of torture.

Marc Garanger knew this in Algeria, in 1960 when he was tasked by his commanding French army officer with snapping ID photos of their female prisoners. France was six years into supressing a guerrilla war for independence in the north African colony, and Muslim and Berber villagers were being arrested en masse for suspected ties to the insurgent National Liberation Front. As his regiment’s official photographer, Garanger made thousands of portraits of rural women against their will. Many of them were forced to remove their headscarves and veils for the photo, revealing themselves for the first time to the hostile gaze of strange men.

Their observer, Garanger was also their oppressor.

For more of this article and Rian Dundon's work, click here.