Perversome – a flickr distillr
Here I am on a battlefield by tetheredto | Stranger series by Benoit P | flower shower (in the garden) by Jan Durina
Flickr really is a macrocosm of humanity. As such it is a thankless task to try sift through its mass. There are routes which active photographers use: joining groups, peer’s favourites, but for the casual observer with an interest in contemporary photography a swathe of quality lies unnoticed beneath the surface.
It can’t be long before the first Flickr superstar emerges. There is a viewpoint that holds having a Flickr account is not a professional proposition, certain art sites who wont except portfolio submissions unless they are held under a ‘real domain’. Ignoring that its format allows it to function as sketch book and private view combined – a valuable tool for developing artists.
Regardless of industry standards the site reaches a lot of people, and like Myspace with Lily Allen and The Arctic Monkeys some of the contributors are bound to reach household status. Fine art contenders for my money include Ashley and Tracy (although they no longer work as a duo) and Jan Durinda (current favourite), Benoit Paille for his continuing strangers portrait series, perhaps Merkley??? for his vibrant and humorous nudes.There are many more Flickr photographers I would like to namecheck but this isn’t the intent of this post.
It would be beneficial if there were a guide to those using it as an exhibition space. The artists I have mentioned are mainly centered across nude photography, Synthetic Pubes does a commendable job of gathering Flickr nudes together and the afore-posted Ne te promene donc pas toute nue, but neither are applicable for those seeking a more general view on contemporary photography.
For that may I recommend Perversome, a livejournal blog that is both meticulous and prodigious in it’s collating of the Flickrverse. As with all exhibitions the content rests with the aesthetics of the curator, the contributor(s) behind Perversome has a broad enough taste to ensure even amongst the emerging themes enough quirks appear to keep it fresh. Although not publicly stated it seems that it is updated via a script that watches favourites from certain accounts – metacuration if you will.
Given the volume and livejournal’s fixed format browsing the RSS feed leads to a more fluid experience:
perversome.livejournal.com/data/rss
Pentru Ochi – an art blog
The heading is a misnomer really. Pentru Ochi is too minimalist to be called a blog, more akin to a tumblr. Except it doesn’t share the annoying habit of tumblrs in leaving images unattributed.
Translated from Romanian it means “for eyes” and is curated by Cristi in a wonderfully simple fashion. He posts just one image under the artist’s name, a photograph or illustration, which links through to their website or portfolio.
No words, no explanation, no judgement. If you like… click through.
Well worth bookmarking.
Ne te promene donc pas toute nue – a nude curation
Ne te promene donc pas toute nue – do not go around naked – is scrapbook of contemporary nude photography. And another lesson in posting something when you see it. I bookmarked the site at first glance, twice, the first reason being content. Nude photography walks a fine line when you are sourcing from the internet, Emeric who runs the scrapbook has a very tasteful eye picking exactly the sort of 70’s into-the-sun flake advert playful naivety I like.
A kind of fashion magazine version of Synthetic pubes.
The other bookmark was in my list of art sites to post about, which I am now doing. Slightly embarrassed because my work has been requested to feature in their forthcoming book, which implies I am only mentioning them for self-publicity. I have no shame but regardless of my involvement I want to recommend Ne te promene donc pas toute nue as great curation. Nice collating Emeric, thank you.
Acido Latte – an art blog
Michel de Broin’s giant mirrorball installation ‘La Maîtresse de la Tour Eiffel’ at The Jardin de Luxembourg recreates the night’s starscape which urban lighting obscures.
The cryptically entitled \\\ is a contemporary art blog curated by an Italian designer Angelo Bramanti (I think), reachable at the the more pronounceable acidolatte.blogspot.com.
With the majority of art blogs you can trace the genus of new exhibition announcements through the via links under each post, a who reads who. Bramanti seems to cast his eye further a field than the other tumblr galleries I follow and almost always features novel emergent artists.
Détail series by Frederic Fontenoy
Recently through his site I have discovered sculptural work by Gregor Gaida, Michel de Broin and Derick Melander, and photographers Frederic Fontenoy, Ansen Seale and Ruben Brulat. Each of these artists deserves a post of their own, but without the dedication and enthusiasm of Bramanti I would have been none the wiser to any of their work, and so feel that this entry should be titled in his honour, as a mark of gratitude.
The artists highlighted here are a fraction of those featured in \\\ so I suggest if you appreciate a dose of contemporary art an immediate visit is in order.
Heisenberg Figure by Ansen Seale
Sybawrite 
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