Culture Shot of the day: Photography from around the world

 I have a real love for photography, and although I never get behind the lens myself, I love seeing how a photographer has captured a moment or what message has been put across through a photo.

American photographer David LaChapelle is my all time favourite.  His photos are vibrant, busy, rich, surreal, eccentric, truly bizarre and best of all, very controversial; most of them are quite risqué, hitting the ball way out of the 'cheeky' park, containing heavy sexual innuendo, lots of nudity as well as  implying criticisms of the silly celebrity obsessed society we live in. It's nice to see a photographer with a bit of uumpphh. Ironically, many celebrities are great fans of his work and are often featured in many of his pieces. Here are a couple of examples, I have refrained from featuring the more...ahem... graphic examples of his work, but I hope you get a small taster of the way he does things

Amazing stuff! His pieces are so different from much other photography I have seen, and his unusal juxtapositions of pop culture are facinating works of art . If you are curious to see more, check out his online studio. 

With a similar style is Japanese photographer Mika Ninagawa. Dubbed the most popular photographer in Japan, Ninagawa like LaChapelle is heavily involved in fashion photography and magazines and uses bold colours and juxtaposing images for a unique, eye-catching effect, that appeals to those craving a modern more edgier, statement form of photography.

For more examples of Mika's work have a look at her official webpage.

Who are your favourite photographers and why? :)