on my morning scan of boing-boing i came across ilkka halso's stunning series of photographs/montages called 'museum of nature'. while i'm not the biggest fan of digital compositions (i realize the hypocritical nature of that statement given my current career choice) the results here are pretty incredible.
even more incredible are the constructions involved in the 'restuarations' series, in which he actually constructed scaffolding around the subjects for his photographs. in both bodies of work there is an obvious awareness of the current plight of the environment but even more so with these, the thought of construction and development being used to preserve nature even though it is the prime reason behind nature's demise creates a nice juxtaposition that makes the work impactful. the lighting and sense of drama for some reason reminds me a lot of japanese photographer izima kaoru's work.
kauro's work has been a long time favorite of mine primarily for it's composition, color and grand cinematic quality. with all of the works living within a series rather than individually you get more of a sense of the subject's stillness, and by subject i mean the staging of the death of a beautiful woman wearing very expensive clothing.
it's funny, in this flickr/digital camera era, i spend so much time snapping pics with my digital camera, even more so lately my iphone, it's really easy to forget just how wonderful photography as art can be.