EXTRAORDINARY
EXTRAORDINARY Photographs by: Mark Rammers Vishal Marapon Jeroen Peters Michael Hensley
CONTENTS FOREWORD 07 MARK RAMMERS
09
VISHAL MARAPON
27
JEROEN PETERS
41
MICHAEL HENSLEY
59
INDEX 84
FOREWORD On a daily basis we visit numerous places and take them for granted, acknowledging their existence yet failing to pay attention to the beauty they behold. ‘Extra Ordinary’ brings the viewer to these places and invites people to stop and stare, to come closer and to take in the structures they would easily overlook. It encourages us to marvel at the world, ask questions about how it’s being created and what influence it truly has on our daily existence. The artists featured in ‘Extra Ordinary’ use simplicity, a masterful combination of colors, and use of line which serves as a continuous thread throughout the book. Mark Rammers, Vishal Marapon, Jeroen Peters, and Michael Hensley create an appealing combination of the more mundane parts of a city with the
liveliness of nature. They can bring out a surreality to the everyday. Spaces, buildings and interiors beautifully reflect cultural aspects of its inhabitants and give a unique insight in how we design our daily lives.
Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales III
08
Mark Rammers ‘Polígonos Industriales’ by Noice Magazine A Dutch photographer currently based in Amsterdam. His work shows beauty that is only revealed to one that allows themselves to take time, to pause and look, to marvel at the places they visit. Ask questions about how it’s being created and what influence it truly has on our daily existence. Mark documents the shape of our environment and the effects this has on our habits and rituals. When documenting travels, he aims to follow the rhythm of the countries he visits, collecting images of seemingly ordinary objects and situations and shaping them to a story of culture, people and everyday life. These images have been taken during multiple journeys to Spain, where many industry and trade takes place in designated areas outside the cities, the ‘Polígonos Industriales’. These, often immense, zones boast a fantastic collection of architecture, shapes and colors, but are meanwhile not the places you are likely to spend a lot of time looking for beauty.
10
Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales III
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales III
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales III
13
ON A
DAILY BASIS
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
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Micheal Hensley. Untitled 2015
17
WE VISIT
NUMEROUS PLACES
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2015
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Mark Rammers. La Muralla Roja
21
AND TAKE THEM FOR GRANTED.
Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales III
24
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
25
Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
26
Explore Vishal Marapon’s Spontaneous Nature by Michael Valinsky for The Wild Magazine At first glance, it’s just a forgotten sweater resting on a ramp. To New York based photographer, Vishal Marapon, that sweater is an opportunity to capture an object lost in time. The things people have left behind – or mere objects resting out in the world – slowly becoming a part of the environment as a whole. But these instance that Vishal captures aren’t necessarily visible to everybody else. To others, they are just things of no importance. So Marapon gives us a unique perspective. Makes us look a little closer. He lets us in on his spontaneous moments of intimacy with the world. His wild wish, “I’d like to increase my brain’s power. And I’d want to use 100% percent of it. It’d let me absorb so much more information and knowledge. I would want a super brain which could create unlimited number of work!”
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales II
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales II
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales II
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales II
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales II
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
37
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
38
Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
39
Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Leiden
40
Jeroen Peter’s Clean and Minimalist Architectural Photography by Owen Pritchard for It’s Nice That Photographer Jeroen Peters started his career in building design, and his continuing series Spatial Interaction reveals his passion for architecture and the built environment. Having taken a career break to study photography part time at the Dutch Photo Academy in Apeldoorn, from where he graduated in 2012, Jeroen has combined his experience and interests.
days, so the colours are vivid and shadows are more emphasized. I don’t like grey and rainy days. It’s one of the reasons I like photographing architecture in Spain so much. Once on location, before I grab my camera I take the time to become acquainted with the building and its surroundings. After a while I try to find the things I get so passionate about: finding that exciting perspective, beautifully intersecting shadow, curved shape or rhythmic pattern.”
“I find my inspiration in numerous things around me. Sometimes I pass by a building and all of a sudden I see an image. Then when visiting a museum, looking at classical paintings, an inspirational thought can suddenly strike me,” says Jeroen. “I love the designs by great architects like Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. Their buildings encourage me to grab my gear and go out shooting.” Jeroen’s work is highly polished and presents each building in a grand way, albeit with tight framing that is allows for a degree of ambiguity in each image. “I like to abstract urban forms by freeing buildings from their spatial context and emphasising structure. This way the subject, or part of it, get all the attention and the viewer is not distracted by trees, lampposts, cars, etc. The result is a very clean and minimalist image,” says Jeroen. “I only go shooting on bright sunny
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Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Amsterdam
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Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Sevilla
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Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Madrid
45
Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
47
Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
48
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
49
Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales I
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales I
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales I
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales I
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Mark Rammers. Tunisia
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales I
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Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
57
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2015
58
Michael Hensley by Lekker Zine of the big tourist hotspots but I’m really only there for those weird urban streets to capture them before I move on. Also I really like to focus on those things that most others would find mundane because when viewed on their own they can be incredibly beautiful; with my photographs a lot of them might be mundane scenes but the composition of the shot makes it seem amazing. To do this I generally only shoot on the brightest and sunniest days, and obviously most photographers will say that photography in the middle of the day is by far the worst time to go because you get harsh shadows and can lose a lot of detail but for me that is specifically when I go because that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
Michael Hensley is a photographer from California living in Brooklyn, New York, who has an extensive history of travels throughout North, South and Central America. His unique use of colours, shapes, perspective and composition all aid in his overall minimalistic style which ranges from tightly cropped pops of colour and shape to wide angled scenes with emphatic contrasts. Not one to shy away from the oft unseen crevices of a city, Michael aims to shine a light on them to show that beauty is more than what is directly in front of you, instead it is the overlooked subtlety of a place that gives it its beauty. “With minimalism there can sometimes not be a whole lot to say, you’re just trying to explore the relationships between colours and composition and at times I like to be a little more abstract and focus on only shapes and colours while at other times I like to take a step back and focus on an entire scene like a building or a street or whatever it may be. I also used to travel and take less photographs and now I travel almost exclusively to photograph. What I normally do is heavily research a place on google maps that I want to go to before I even go so that I know which neighbourhoods and even what streets I need to be in when I’m there. It’s really the only way of getting the most, as far as photography goes, out of a vacation, and sure I’ll see some
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Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2015
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Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2015
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2015
63
WE FAIL
Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2017
66
Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, London
67
TO SEE
THE BEAUTY
Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Dessau Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Leiden Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Sevilla Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Sevilla
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Jeroen Peters. Spatial Interactions, Madrid
71
WE NEVER LOOK AT.
Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales II
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Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
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Mark Rammers. PolĂgonos Industriales III
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Mark Rammers. La Muralla Roja
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
78
Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
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Vishal Marapon. Untitled, 2016
81
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2016
82
Micheal Hensley. Untitled, 2017
83
INDEX Michael Hensley, 16–20, 25, 38, 49, 56, 58–62, 75, 82–83 Vishal Marapon, 26–31, 37, 39, 46–48, 57, 63, 66, 78–81 Jeroen Peters, 40–46, 67–71 Mark Rammers, 8–13, 21, 24, 32–36, 50–55, 74, 76–77
Edited and designed by Alexandra Whitney This book is typeset in Geogrotesque by Eduardo Manso, 2008 The paper is recycled text paper Printed by Village Copier, New York, NY Photographs by Michael Hensley © Michael Hensley, 2017 Jeroen Peters © 2017 Jeroen Peters Mark Rammers © Mark Rammers 2017 Vishal Marapon © Vishal Marapon