Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida: The Minimiam Universe

Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle combine photography, magical landscapes, culinary backdrops, and portraiture to create settings inhabited by diminutive characters, referred to as minimiam. Each diptych reveals to the viewer a whimsical land that plays with our minds, as well as the subject. Akiko, Japanese, has always been attracted to the world of gastronomy. As a child, she invented tiny characters that populated her journal. She is a renowned food photographer. Akiko has participated in more than 30 cookbooks and her work is published in international magazines. Pierre, French, grew up on comics. He is published in major gourmet magazines and his still-like photographs appear in corporate commercials.

The MINIMIAM project morphs multiple genres of photography, including microphotography, culinary art, portraiture and landscape. The action, ranging from sporting scenes to warfare, takes place in carefully staged, fantastic, food settings. In each work, the first image introduces toy-like actors in an ambiguous setting. The second panel reveals the scene’s totality, to an unexpected, often amusing end. Though generally light-hearted and playful, the artists’ work intelligently probes fundamental questions of human perception, and how meaning is constructed and manipulated through images. 

Sophisticated photographic devices form the core of the artists' expression, which both entertain and unsettle the viewer. Using extremely short depths of field with very small apertures, the miniature characters are sharply in focus, while the surrounding landscapes are blurred. At the same time, their diminutive size contrasts with the gigantic surrounding space, allowing the viewer's eye to freely wander around the entire scene. Stage set lighting silhouettes the actors adding drama to the story, and intensifying the textures and colors of the edibles. Our appetite is piqued.

(http://madelynjordonfineart.com/exhibition/focus/pierre_javelle_and_akiko_ida_the_minimiam_universe)

Getty Photographs of Yosemite by Carleton E. Watkins

In this video, Matthew Butson, Vice-President of the Getty Images Archive, examines the now-iconic photographs of Carleton E. Watkins kept within the Archive's vintage vaults. Watkins was one of the earliest American landscape photographers, and in 1861, he set out to capture the untouched landscapes of Yosemite, California. These photographs of Yosemite set Watkin on the path to become, as Butson states, "a pioneering environmental photographer." The large scale of Watkins' images and plates allowed Watkins to reproduce every detail of the vast scenes he photographed. One of Watkins' albums of his Yosemite photographs was shown to President Abraham Lincoln by a senator, which inspired Lincoln to set forth and sign the Yosemite Grant Act in 1864. This Act determined that the area of Yosemite would be held and cared for by the State of California "for public use, resort, and recreation," and not developed by private, commercial enterprises. The preservation of Yosemite National State Park by state and federal resources paved the way for the designation of other national parks and monuments.

View from Camp Grove, Yosemite
Carleton E. Watkins, 1861
Albumen print