Out Of My League, Into My Heart

Erwin Olaf is strange. He's one of the few contemporary photographs who can successufully work for the fashion industry maintaining a strong artistic vision.

Even when his shots are thought for a commercial purpose, he is able to balance things adding his personal surreal touch like in these pictures below, published on The New York Times magazine, where I can't decide if the girls - and their Versace & Co. dresses - are melting into the surrounding space or are just popped out of it...





Usually when I like an artist I like the whole of his world. This doesn't happens with Olaf and this probably justify the fact that the better word I can find to describe him is "strange", when other people use "versatile" and "eclectic" instead. Actually I really dislike some of his series, but at the same time there are some that totally won me over, like Grief (below).




The most obvious reasons for my estatic adoration for Grief could be the 60s setting and the figurative representation of the - broken - American Dream, but I believe it's more than this. There's something in those shots...the figures seem to be trapped in, lost in desolation and despair and looking for a new start and a pinch of consolation. It's a story behind a mere atmosphere, something that clearly reminds me of my beloved Edward Hopper and of Gregory Crewdson work (which I love, by the way).
But all this realism, this cold light and this loss of shadows, suggest it's all fake. Despite this, you still spend hours contemplating the pictures and looking for the movie that is going on into/behind/below them and this curiously makes me think of Mulholland Drive by David Lynch...

Same thing with his previous series, Hope and Rain (see below) which, with Grief, form a trilogy and are definitely the most conteplative works of Olaf. So far from his immediately shocking photos but still - and in my opinion way more - creepy.