100% Organic Hipster Scum

in a church i visited for a wedding

This woodblock print by the Shin-hanga (New Print) virtuoso Shiro Kasamatsu (1898–1991), is titled "Shinshu Shirahone Onsen" (Shirahone Hot Spring in Shinshū)., 1935, Japan. The artwork captures the historic, hidden mountain onsen (hot spring) of Shirahone, nestled deep in the Japanese Alps of Nagano Prefecture (historically Shinshū). Famed for its opaque, milky-white thermal waters rich in calcium and magnesium, the spring is presented here as an idyllic, secret sanctuary.

"This photograph was made for my first European solo show in Berlin, in the gallery Anahita Contemporary. It's a self-portrait alongside Anahita Sadighi, Moshtari Hilal and Susu AbdulMajid. We are respectively from Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite our different roots I noticed that we all share a similar background, having grown up in Western nations that often vilify the places our families are from. I also noticed the strong profiles of each of our faces. So I decided to create this portrait with the title Axis of Evil – a play on the term so frequently used to describe our home countries when we were growing up. It also embraces the beauty of our distinctive noses, which are often treated as ugly, something to be changed. I wanted to embrace these qualities of ours in this image, creating something powerful, defiant."

February 2016

Luke Zayac

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Carved ripples on granite. Shen Lieyi.

I want to make a piece for each of the dragons, so consider this part 1 of the set.