Superheroes – shape+colour

dave devries: the monster engine.

We all know there is nothing as expansive and pure and all-encompassing as the imaginations of children. Those little un-biased brains have nothing much to worry about (hopefully…) and so they just connect right away. Kids don’t edit or judge or over-think themselves. They’re awesome.

With “The Monster Engine”, New Jersey-based illustrator Dave Devries takes the drawings of children and re-envisions them as more realistic looking art. I can’t tell you how much I love how faithful he is to the original drawings. He doesn’t edit or try to improve them at all – he just faithfully transfers them with a more experienced artistic skill. Can you imagine being a little kid and then seeing your drawing come to life like this? It would blow my little kid mind.

Via Gerry Mak @ Lost At E Minor

dulce pinzón: “the real story of the superheroes”.

Dulce Pinzón is a Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based photographer. In The Real Story of the Superheroes she explores the cultural identity of Mexican immigrants working in the US and the value that Americans place on the labour they provide (which their economy has come to rely upon). Set against the now ingrained but seldom-examined idea of American “heroism” post-9/11, Pinzón take the lens of her own immigrant history and experiences in Mexico to ask a simple question: “what really is a superhero?”

(Bernabe Mendez is a window cleaner in New York City and sends home $500/month to his family in Mexico)

To raise the point, Pinzón creates a ludicrous but photographically engaging contradiction. Her subjects, all Mexican immigrants working low-wage jobs to send money home to their families, are pictures at work in traditional superhero costumes. Spider Man does the windows. Cat Woman changes diapers…

Often over-looked and maligned by the very people they are serving, these workers have silently become a fixture of the US economy even as Republican presidential candidates proposed wide-sweeping and totally illogical immigration reform to appeal to conservatives.

The pictures enlighten through their sense of entertainment; though we’ve trained to at-first relate to the legend of the superhero, the juxtaposition of what the photos are calling out comes to the top of mind very quickly.