Welcome to Kalamna, the student blog of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Light Calligraphy

I have noticed that this blog does not feature enough Middle Eastern art, and that's of course my fault. So here's an effort to make amends (source: designboom): 
exploring the gestures and movements of calligraphy, nantes-based artist kaalam (aka julien breton) has created a body of work that uses hand-held light and long-exposure photographic techniques tocapture the transient form within a real setting. often utilizing urban or historical sites as histhree-dimensional canvas, the self-taught artist creates his own latin-based alphabet that heavily draws from traditional arabic and eastern calligraphy. arresting and provocative, the floating light forms are not mere superimposed subjects but display a direct engagement with the surroundings. 
the capturing process, which can take as long as ten minutes, requires a choreographed movement which kaalam practices before hand in heavy repetition. different colours of 'ink' is achieved through pigmented gelatin which is applied directly onto the lamps. none of the photographs are retouchedor edited, illustrating the laborious process in a single shot.  


 Respectively, "last train", Brooklyn; "undercover", Brooklyn Bridge; "aerial"

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