Here’s a focus on five of the readers’ favourite discoveries, presented in May 2021 on Fisheye’s website: Ashley Markle, Julia Buruleva, Matilde Søes Rasmussen, Jo Broughton and Ishola Akpo.
Ashley Markle
“I used to approach my work with two methods. I would make constructed scenes with my Mamiya and I would mix those with my observational images shot on my little point and shoot. But now, I refuse to stick to one approach”,Ashley Markle
tells us. Produced during lockdown, the book Weekends with my mother and her lover offers a liberated immersion into a couple’s daily routine – the artist’s mother and step-father’s. A symbiotic narrative, bringing together three distinct voices.
© Ashley Markle
Julia Buruleva
is interested in fascination as a concept. The desire to captivate, to question her public – for although her creations are intended to be symbolic, the artist prefers to keep the ideas behind her metaphors secret, to “play with her audience”. Overflowing with energy, the photographer multiplies projects, and builds a universe of her own, where bodies become elements of the landscape, and transcend their flesh.
© Julia Buruleva
Matilde Søes Rasmussen
Flat parties, backstage of fashion shows, photoshoots… Behind the glitters of modeling hides a melancholic loneliness, and a complex relation with one’s body and self. By putting together images and texts, Danish model Matilde Søes Rasmussen captures – with dark humour and cynical poetry – this fascinating and repelling universe. She signs, with Unprofessional, an atypical body of work far from the polished and luxurious image of fashion.
© Matilde Søes Rasmussen
Jo Broughton
With Empty Porn Sets, photographer Jo Broughton uncovers the backstage of adult photoshoots. In disembodied rooms, the British artist elevates the settings that host the fantasies of both artistic directors and viewers.
© Jo Broughton
Ishola Akpo
“Reinvesting history is a way of taming it. Making it more personal, more poetic”
, says Beninese artist Ishola Akpo, who chose to pay tribute to African Queens – forgotten figures of History. He underwent with Agbara Women and Traces d’une reine an investigation on a complex past where the notion of power is reminiscent of both resistance and fragility.
© Ishola Akpo
Cover picture: © Ashley Markle
