EXTREME COLOR IS BEAUTIFUL NOW

Digital photography has enabled, or perhaps even encouraged, photographic artists to push color to extremes.

Much as there is a faction of fine arts photographers who hold the “pure” image, as captured, vs processed, as the holy grail, there has been a growing number who consider manipulation, retouching, staging, and varying degrees of Photoshopping as part of their artform.

As such, color is being explored as a subject.

ANNA KRACHEY

Austin-based photographer Anna Krachey amps the color in her photos in fresh, inventive ways.

She creates still-lifes and household vignettes, using commonplace objects. We also love the extreme way she treats common flowers.

Krachey received her MFA in photography from The University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been featured in museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide.

Krachey she sees her subjects for their “material value” rather than for their function. All become sculptural objects, devoid of context.

Krachey’s images reimagine the familiar, rendering them as more intriguing. Her extreme use of color is both extremely beautiful and slightly disconcerting.

She often uses a 4x5 camera, which gives her the color and detail she wants. She claims that it also forces the distance from her subject matter she desires, as she aims to disconnect from it, so that she can push it, past its real limits, into hyperbolic extreme.

KARINE LAVAL

French multimedia artist Karine Laval creates works of extreme color through a combination of photography and video. They are surreal compositions -- journeys through physical and metaphysical, navigating through time, place, memory, and perception.

Her recent works deconstruct reality, creating extreme abstractions, with the integration of digital technologies, painting, moving images, and performance.

Laval studied at the University of La Sorbonne, Cooper Union School, School of Visual Arts, and the New School. Her artistic practice encompasses photography and video.

Her work has been featured in international publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, Dazed & Confused, Le Figaro Magazine, The New Yorker, among many other publications, as well as in museum and gallery exhibitions around the world.

MELISSA EDER

Award-winning artist Melissa Eder creates photo-based works and installations that push color to extremes. Her subject matter is a mismatched mix of kitschy objects and manufactured landscapes, with a shocking play of vibrant hues. 

Eder experiments, coaxing bright pink, orange, and crimson into vibration against Yves Klein blue and aqua, with black punctuations. She turns the ordinary into mind-and-eye-openers.

Her ongoing project (started in 1995), Sense of Herself, Eder has compiled over 750 eight-by-ten-inch “portraits of the mundane.”

Eder studied at the Parsons School of Design and Hunter College. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.

In May 2015 Melissa Eder was profiled by the Huffington Post in Meet The Contemporary Photographers Experimenting With ‘Radical Color by Maddie Crum.

Read more about Beautiful Extremes, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including Extreme Surf is Beautiful Now, Extreme Peaks are Beautiful Now and The Beautiful Extreme Art of Plating Now.

Want more stories like this? Sign up for our weekly BN Newsletter, Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr. Join our BeautifulNow Community and connect with the most beautiful things happening in the world right now!

Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition. We run new creative competitions every week! Now, it’s even easier to enter with the new BeautifulNow App!

Plus check out the rest of our App’s beautiful features. It’s free to download here.

IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Anna Krachey. Live at Red Rocks.
2. Image: by Anna Krachey. Teapot.
3. Image: by Anna Krachey. Zodiac.
4. Image: by Anna Krachey. Irish Rose.
5. Image: by Anna Krachey. Mums.
6. Image: by Anna Krachey. Negative.
7. Image: by Anna Krachey. Mattress.
8. Image: by Karine Laval. Heterotopia.
9. Image: by Karine Laval. Poolscape-60.
10. Image: by Karine Laval. State of Flux. Video still.
11. Image: by Karine Laval. Crash.
12. Image: by Melissa Eder. Can You Dig It? A Chromatic Series Of Floral Arrangements (Orange).
13. Image: by Melissa Eder. Can You Dig It? A Chromatic Series Of Floral Arrangements (Purple).
14. Image: by Melissa Eder. “Can you dig it?/ A Chromatic Series Of Floral Arrangements” (Yellow).
15. Image: by Melissa Eder. “Can you dig it?/ A Chromatic Series Of Floral Arrangements” (Leopard).
16. Image: by Anna Krachey. Seafoam.
17. Image: by BN App - Download now!
18. Image: by Karine Laval. Poolscape-71.