All Images © Aaron Ansarov

This collection of zooids (dactylozooids (the hunters), gastrozooids (the eaters), gonozooids (the reproducers) and the pneumatophores (the sailors) are more commonly known as the Portuguese Man o’ War. Not much is known about these creatures except that they sting. Aaron Ansarov turned them into beautiful works of psychedelic art, yet remains unharmed. Ansarov and his wife collected them from the shores of south Florida, transported them in a cooler full of sea-water to his nearby studio, photographed them on light tables (mirrored their image in Photoshop), and returned them to the shore, unharmed. To be clear, however, these creatures are on their death bed once they hit the beach. “When they drift ashore,” says Ansarov, “it is rare for them to survive the tide and be pulled back out to sea…sometimes they may get pulled back out, but it’s up to nature’s design.” To see more of Ansarov’s work, visit his website.

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Installation view of “Monuments at Landmarks” at Art in General, New York, NY, April 20 – June 29, 2013.
From left to right: Capitol Reef Cement Dip (Facedown) 1 & 2, Moon Wave, Utah Maine Concrete Slab.
Image courtesy Art in General. Photography by Steven Probert.

Letha Wilson‘s work uses imagery from the natural world as a starting point for interpretation, construction and confrontation. A broad range of techniques and materials are used – photography, sculpture, installation, concrete, wood – in work that blurs the lines between abstraction and representation, landscape and architecture. The ability for a photograph to transport the viewer is both called upon, and questioned; sculptural intervention attempts to compensate for the photograph’s failure to encompass the physical site it represents.  Landscape photography as a genre is approached with equal parts reverence and skepticism.  Letha Wilson’s work is on view at Art in General until June 29th. She is currently represented by Higher Pictures in New York City. All images below courtesy of Letha Wilson.

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All Images © Mitch Epstein, from “New York Arbor” (Steidl)

Mitch Epstein‘s new book, “New York Arbor” includes photographs of the idiosyncratic trees that inhabit New York City; these pictures underscore the importance of trees to urban life and their complex relationship to their human counterparts. Rooted in New York’s parks, gardens, sidewalks, and cemeteries, some trees grow wild, some are contortionists adapting to their constricted surroundings, and others are pruned into prize specimens.  Join Mitch Epstein at Cooper Union tonight, Monday, April 29 at 7:00 pm for a discussion about “New York Arbor.” A book signing at Dashwood Books is Tuesday, May 7th.

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“Dendrobium spectabile.”  All Images © Jonathan M. Singer / Courtesy of Abbeville Press

Happy spring everyone! Botanica Magnifica features two hundred and fifty photographs of rare and exotic plants and flowers by Hasselblad Laureate Award winner Jonathan Singer. The original edition of Botanica Magnifica, consisting of five lavishly hand-bound volumes, was limited to just ten copies, the first of which was recently donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The book is published by Abbeville Press in New York, NY.

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“Okawa Village, Tosa County, Kochi Prefecture,” 2007, © Toshio Shibata

One of Japan’s leading landscape photographers, Toshio Shibata, is being introduced to new American audiences at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The exhibition, “Constructed Landscapes,” opens April 2o, and runs through October 6, 2013. The exhibition features 28 of Shibata’s large-scale works that consider the relationship between human infrastructure and nature through images of major engineering projects, like bridges and dams. This is the first time his color photographs are showing the in United States. “As stunning as Toshio Shibata’s photographs are, they are infused with deep awareness of humanity’s place in nature,” PEM curator of photography Phillip Prodger said in a statement announcing the show. “As with all the best landscape photographers, his works cause us to reflect on what it means to live in this world.” (more…)