Category: Photography

Born in Schwelm, Germany, Kevin Krautgartner now works as a photographer and image editor in the German city of Wuppertal. After graduating from University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund with a degree in photography and graphic design, Krautgartner has traveled around many different countries thanks to his talent. When not creating the images for his work, the photographer devotes himself to his personal projects. In ‘Reduced to the max’, Krautgartner turns his lens on urban spaces and architecture, highlighting its details, colors and shapes in the sharp, minimalist manner.

Photographer Agata Wolanska‘s career path started by capturing friends, mostly dancers and musicians, and soon turned into passion for fashion shoots.

“It’s kind of the retrospective of what I see and put into my photography.”
Working between London and Paris, Wolanska’s style can be described as the combination of her affection for colors, shapes, and a candid observation of the everyday life. Fascinated by different cultures and environments, Wolanska puts instinctively the things she encounters on a daily basis into the fashion context. “It’s a sort of documenting ‘mise-en-scène’, which allows me to create the atmosphere and transfer my taste on things I can see around me,” says the photographer. Her work is usually described as retro, which feels fine with the artist. She explains: “I don’t dislike it as it’s kind of the retrospective of what I see and put into my photography.”

For Natalie Weinberger, Brooklyn-based ceramic artist, pottery is about compromising aesthetic and function, and quoting the past while making objects that feel contemporary. Although her oeuvre has been guided by utilitarian modes in creating structurally perfect forms of everyday minimalist objects, her recent works explore some new approaches.

Finding beauty in the natural materials and reference in the history, Natalie Weinberger’s sophisticated pottery truly celebrates one of the world’s oldest crafts. Educational background in historic preservation has a strong influence on artist’s work, and her ceramic objects often have an appearance of some other, lost time. Like every prominent potter, Natalie deeply appreciates supplies that become alive after modelling and firing. Exquisite craftsmanship also involves unusual blend of materials- a mixture of recycled stoneware, porcelain scraps, and black volcanic sand is used to create raw texture on her utilitarian creations. Therefore, timeless is not solely an adjective that describes these sturdy objects by aesthetic set of principles. In a latest collection “Big Foot”, she curiously discovers the forms of wheel-thrown stemware, which she finds at the same time “elegant and absurd”. There is also an ongoing collaboration with product designer Ana Kras on “Family”, a modular group of abstract tableware.

The Monte Rosa Hut designed by Bearth & Deplazes Architekten is a mountain hut located on the Monte Rosa massif near Zermatt. The five-story cabin made of wood is sitting on an ice-free rugged part at an altitude of almost 3000 meters.

On the lowest level the communal areas are surrounded by ribbon glazing. The bedrooms are located above. The impressive mountain panorama can be seen while climbing up the cascading spiral stairway. One of the outstanding features of the cabin is its self-sufficiency: more than 90 percent of the power supply comes from the sun. In order to achieve that it was constructed from prefabricated frame elements that are isolated. In this way solar energy is stored to distribute the warmth throughout the whole house. Water is produced from surrounding glaciers, then filtered and stored in huge tanks.

The Month Rosa Hut was inaugurated in 2009 as a research project of the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) and Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) who describe the hut as “the most complex wooden construction in Switzerland“.

Under the name Pettersen & Hein, one artist and one designer join in a collaborative project that challenges boundaries between form and function. Exploring new possibilities of common creation, Magnus Pettersen and Lea Hein design one-of-a-kind pieces that aim to be unclassified objects and perspective-changers.

The Norwegian artist Magnus Pettersen and the Danish furniture designer Lea Hein started their unusual collaboration back in 2015. Both coming from so similar, yet different fields of visual art, artistic duo’s mutual project is allowing new practice and experimentation. Without typical restrictions and burdens of form and function that their fields adopt, Pettersen & Hein’s curated collections are homage to material, color, and form. This liberation from categorization is tolerating the usage and combination of contradictive industrial materials that artists transform into simple geometrical forms. Adding pigments to heavy and monochrome concrete, they change material’s color making it organic and alive, but also are offering an altered insight about the same to the observer. Questioning the possibilities of, “what happens when design is no longer comprised by function, but longs for the aesthetic and ethical freedom of art,” Pettersen & Hein manage to merge the settled parameters forming their own rules.

Featured in the most recent issue of Apartamento, ‘Casa Horta‘ is an unconventional house restored to become a dreamy space where color plays the main role.

A 1920s single-family house located in Barcelona, Spain, ‘Casa Horta’ is now occupied by Guillermo Santomà. The young designer used his skills and fantasy to transform the three floors building into a dreamy space with a bold combination of colors. Energetic shades of pink, greeen and blue are carried throughout the majestic interior, highlighting the specifics of the construction. The designer reveals in an interview that he only had “a team of five guys… [with] only very basic notions of construction.” However, the result is terrific – the space bursts with extraordinary energy, juxtaposing traditional Spanish tile with a mix of playful motifs, including the sky painted on the ceiling.

British manufacturer Sunspel is a pioneer in craftsmanship and produces luxurious everyday fashion since 1860. It all started with the idea of making everyday wear from best fabrics.

Basic fashion to the highest standardsThe first garments produced by Sunspel included tunics and underwear that were some of the earliest t-shirts ever made. Driven by the passion of making clothes in the best possible way, Sunspel runs a longstanding factory in Long Eaton, England. Here designers cooperate with craftspeople and both have the goal to bring basic fashion to the highest standards. In order to meet the demand, Sunspel works with textile producers overseas as well, but only with those who comply with their values of craftsmanship.

Since the company’s foundation Sunspel has been in search of fabrics that are most pleasing to wear, as long lasting as possible and unique in workmanship. The traditional textile business combines recent technology with a timeless style. With this approach they produce, among other things, underwear, classic polo shirts and T-shirts with attention for detail. The dedication to craftsmanship and the implementation of ancient British skills and techniques can be traced back to the earliest days of the present Long Eaton factory.

The brand’s own employees therefore focus maintaining the specialty of each garment. Sunspel engages both young and old workers at its textile fabrics. In this way they not only celebrate time-honored methods, but also achieve new levels of technical expertise. Sunspel transfers its doctrine to modernity while keeping up the principles of the company.

Studying at Santa Monica High in California, 16 year old Nico Young was commissioned by Kathy Ryan, director of photography at New York Times Magazine, to shoot a photo essay and cover for the new issue.

His assignment was to document the timeless rituals of high school, the mad dash between classes, lunchtime cliques, yearbook signings, the prom, and dissections in the science lab. The images capture the subjects of entering the adulthood and leaving the relative safety of high school. Nico has created a set of images that don’t show condescendence or judgement on what is being documented. The most interesting pictures were made when the students were free to be themselves, in a world of their own appreciation of art.