Put simply, Ross C Kelly takes a lot of photos, and he recreates the scene by putting back together all these pictures in a big photomontage. The above image is made of a collage of 1335 photos. Of course, it looks small on the web, but the poster I bought the other day is much cooler to look at.
Because he mixes photos taken at different times of the day, he can have a final image with elements of day and night at the same time like in a Magritte painting, crowded places become empty (a bit similar to Tokyo Nobody), and overall the elements of nature and architecture stand out beautifully. But he stays faithful to proportions and perspectives, making his landscape become more interesting because they looks real, as you’re used to see it, not just like some weird cubism interepretation, and renders the montage even more powerful and somehow disturbing.
View the rest of his Tokyo Portfolio. As well as high wiRe, another very cool portfolio of his.
Tokyo Nobody is a picture book by Masataka Nakano in which he took many photos of the same scenery, and used them to “erase” people from the places. When you have been in Tokyo for even 10 minutes, you really appreciate the feeling of calm and serenity coming from these pictures and also the amount of work and preparation needed for such a task.
At the moment on the Japanese radios, one of the hip albums being promoted and played 5-10 times a day is Radiodread, a cover of Radiohead’s excellent “OK Computer“. It’s just yet another proof that using something made by people with artistic talent (in this case, genius) does not give you talent, but in fact usually shows your lack of it.
Please, allow me to try and explain as briefly and explicitely as I can. Radiohead is the whitest of all white bands, it has its own original style, and in OK Computer more than in any of their other albums, it created a sound that is simply Radiohead’s. You can start painting strange faces with both eyes on the same side or make a montage of soup cans, but you need to have huge balls to call it an homage to Picasso or Warhol. It’s over, move on, there is plenty to do if you’re motivated and talented. If all you can do is add some rhythm box and sing over someone else’s tune, it’s called karaoke, and nobody should have to hear your joke of a song…
From the Easystar Records website:
During this two year long process, producer Michael G and his Easy Star partners Smith and Lem Oppenheimer, kept coming back to one record, which eventually became the album they chose: OK Computer. Says Michael G: “Conceptually and thematically we knew the album was a solid candidate; but we just weren’t sure whether the arrangements could work. On one hand, OK Computer has elements that are perfect—strong melodies, intense dynamics and trippy soundscapes; on the other, it has complex time signatures, chord changes and things that typically aren’t found in reggae. The more we looked at it, the more we realized that this was an album we had to do.”
The more you looked at it, the more you should have realized you were stoned and that there are plenty of albums you should just leave alone!
