Container Love - The House of Love

ON THE BOUNDARIES OF REALITY

Trans-species, multi-headed monsters, crudely constructed wooden-legged figures and other fairly disturbing creatures – Asger Carlsen is as far from being your average photographer as it can be. The New York-based artist started off his official career documenting crime scenes before opening the door to his disturbingly captivating, surreal hyper-reality. His pictures leave you with more questions than answers and yet if you miss it, you might regret it for the rest of your life.

ALL OF ME WANTS ALL OF YOU

Sometimes, the moments we miss the most are the ones that we just couldn’t recall in great detail. Dutch filmmaker and photographer Mees Peijnenburg speaks the tear-jerkingly beautiful language of cinema: gorgeous compositions and deep, deep colors are key elements of his latest series, KISS KISS, too. We can’t help but wonder if these pictures were stills taken out of a movie, what would it be about.

I REMEMBER TOUCH

Summer melancholy never felt better - our favorite polish photographer, Leo Maki’s back with his neon colored magic that we love so dearly. Despite the vivid colors and Leo’s beautifully erotic approach, there is a certain heaviness in his art that makes his photography feel not only genuine, but true, too. We are honored and very excited to be able to feature Leo’s newest series that he created exclusively for Container Love. Enjoy!

YOUR BODY, MY TEMPLE

If you are a long time follower, you already know that Kostis Fokas has a special place within our Container Love family and our hearts, too. Reexploring the wonder that is the male body, the greek photographer takes a great deal of his inspiration from the aesthetics of 90’s fashion editorials, using sun-bitten colors and direct flash setups. Made available exclusively for Container Love, his latest series is a special selection of his new, never-seen-before photos and some of our personal favorites.

OUR TIME TOGETHER, OUR TIME APART

Every time when we look at Shane Reynold’s photos, there is some mystery to them. It’s like getting only a glimpse of something unknown, something desirable. We want to know more, we want to know a story, any story that could have possibly led to the creation of the picture. The New York based photographer’s new series is no exception: we are stuck in time, we are losing the grip on reality, we are lovesick for someone who may not even exist.

SLIPPING UNDER YOUR SKIN

The most wonderful thing about collages is that they are never a whole. They make us imagine the picture behind the picture, instead of revealing it. As one of our favorite German artists, Stefan Gunnesch has a unique vision: his works may be pleasing to the eye, yet they do carry the uneasiness of something unspoken. With his new series, he went even further, opening a door to a dangerous place entirely built out of memories.

A LOVE LETTER IN POLAROIDS

Russian-american multimedia artist Slava Mogutin’s POLAROID RAGE is greatly influenced by his bicultural dissident and refugee experience. His new series is an excellent selection of a wide variety of portraits that he took in New York, Los Angeles and Berlin, creating these compact memories of displacement and identity, pride and shame, devotion and disaffection, love and hate.

FEEDING CURIOSITY

"I take photos to understand better" – having a history in fashion, Tokyo-based photographer Keisuke Morizawa is the one who observes instead of interfering. Finding both peace and passion behind the camera, he works on the border between reality and daydreaming.

FUTURE WORLD

Armando Terrero, a fashion photographer from the Dominican Republic but living in Barcelona, studied and worked in advertising, graphic design and the illustration industry and it shows in the concepts, compositions and simplicity of his photography. In his sessions he combines analog and digital photography.

ROOM TAIPEI

Jaihang is a photographer and graphic designer, born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and now living in Taipei. His photos are a mix of self portraits and depictions of couples in every day life. His longterm project ROOM TAIPEI, shot over a period of eight years between Taipei and Shenzhen, was published as a book in early 2021.

THE JOURNEY OF FARADA AKLUM

There is always a story behind the pictures. This one is about a long journey through the desert, about hardships, danger and persecution. But it is also about pride and strength, about pioneering spirit, about challenges and arriving. Photographer Yarden Amsalem from Tel Aviv takes us on this journey into the desert and tells us that story. The name of the project is THE JOURNEY OF FARADA AKLUM. So, how might this story end?

MAKE US FEEL SAFE, JACOPO

The golden rule: find a way to communicate with the people in front of your lens. Show them as they really are. Be authentic. Make us sad or make us happy or make us think. Make us feel something... Jacopo Paglione, a photographer from Rome, understands how to communicate. And the results are beautiful snapshots full of trust, intimacy and respect.

OUR FIRST LAST TIME TOGETHER

Tales of a summer that has never happened, tales of a love that never fades away - the pandemic has left its marks on everyone’s life, but photographer Robert Tennent is one of the very few who was able to transform his lockdown-limbo into something extraordinary. His new photobook I'M GOING TO MISS YOU is oh so much more than a hardcover collection of pictures shot during the pandemic on 35mm film in New Zealand: it’s an ode to the rare moments when life feels light and easy.

NO TEARS FOR LOVERS

Facing genuine intimacy is always a different experience and going through renowned british photographer Stuart Sandford’s new photobook is no exception. THE BEST WAY TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IS IN BED is erotic, yet gentle, carefully composed yet absolutely natural. By demystifying nudity he creates a world in which emotions are running wild, making us feel free at last but also reminding us: we all are vulnerable to the elements of love.

BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! GOES MAGAZINE

BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! goes magazine. And we love it! We had a little chat with founder and director Ghislain Pascal from THE LITTLE BLACK GALLERY and asked him to tell us a little more about the project. Get a first glimpse at the magazine here. And then go get it!

LOVING WITHOUT FEAR

Loving without fear – the essence of columbian painter Daniel Marin Medina’s work is undoubtedly simple, yet as wonderful as it gets. Mapping sexuality while identifying himself as someone who is far from being a perfectionist: his philosophy of love truly shines through every brush stroke he makes.

I PAINT TO NEVER DIE

Born in Abarán, Murcia (Spain), Bran Sólo defines himself as a “Good person, painter, illustrator, designer and photographer, as well as many other things I never wanted to be“. In 2012 he decided to abandon his work as a computer scientist and lifestyle to devote himself fully to drawing and enrolled in the Murcia School of Art.

CURATING MOMENTS OF DAILY LIFE

Santiago Mora is a Mexican visual artist and art director who defines his work as a curatorship of everyday life moments. He captures ephemeral energy, exploring the possibilities of the pictorial medium through the use of technologies such as digital images that he uses as a reference. His work reflects about contemporaneity, addressing issues such as communication, identity, consumerism, and sexuality.

A WAY TO REMEMBER

„In order to create imagery like this, I needed people to trust me” – while the world stood still during the pandemic, Rob Tennent spent months traveling around New Zealand, taking pictures for his simply gorgeous photobook, I’M GOING TO MISS YOU. In conversation with Container Love, the Auckland-based photographer told us about his take on remembrance, the shutter sound that made him fall in love with 120mm film and the strangest summer that will stay with us until the days that we die.

WHEN TWO BODIES COLLIDE

Celebrating the anomaly that is love – there were so many questions that we wanted to ask director & photographer Mees Peijnenburg ever since we first saw images from his hopefully never-ending series, Kiss Kiss. We are very happy that we’ve finally got a chance to sit together with Mees to discuss kissing strangers, love’s dynamics and the tenderness that lies within the natural brutality of a kiss.

SOME KIND OF MAGIC MOMENT

There are multiple reasons why Stuart Sandford has become one of our favorite contemporary british creators. A lot of things have happened since he first has been featured on Container Love and we couldn’t be happier coming back to him on the occasion of his new photo book, THE BEST WAY TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IS IN BED. We sat down with the multimedia artist to talk about sexuality, polaroids and the demystification of love.

A NEW LIFE IN COLOR

The way color makes us feel - as part of our series showcasing our most inspirational African #lovebrands and the designers behind them, we sat down with the head of South Africa’s VIVIERS, Lezanne Viviers to talk about the clash between western preconceptions and true African identity, the reinvention of individualism and how far-from-ideal circumstances can fuel extraordinary creativity.

DESIGN IS NOT AN INDIVIDUAL SPORT

FLORIAN B. MÁTHÉ is a Berlin-based designer and performer specializing in latex as a medium of unapologetically queer and artistic expression. His goal is to combine performance art, fetish and high fashion. With his desire to question the concepts of beauty, the body and aesthetics as his main motivation, he aims to convey vibrancy, simplicity and emotion in the context of fashion.

A DEPARTURE FROM THE EVERYDAY

We're in love with the designs and silhouettes of MAX THOMAS SANDERSON, dedicated to contemporary, artisanal tailoring for all genders. Each garment bears a distinctive signature resulting from formal training in bespoke tailoring, and is designed, cut and made in-house. We had a little chat with Max Thomas Sanderson about creativity, inspiration, and of course love.

EACH SHOOT HOLDS A MEMORY

Shane Reynolds is a photographer based in New York City. He began taking photos at 17, using his grandmas garage as a “studio”. After attending Ithaca College he spent the past few years living in New York and London. Shane now works primarily with film, which all of these pictures are on. And we are completely in love.

YOUNG AND RENEGADE

We're in love with the work of Zeno Spyropoulos, a Berlin-based photographer, who has just published his first photography book, YOUNG AND RENEGADE. "Showing raw moments of intimacy, and creative or sexual expression as they naturally occur, pictures that normalise a culture of sexual and bodily freedom, regardless of sexuality and background."

CODE BLUE

Leo Maki is a photographer and video maker based in Warsaw, Poland, with an eye for colorful light and beautiful portraits. Lucky Container, there's a series with its favorite color: CODE BLUE. The series is about a phrase used in hospitals in exceptional situations when the patient needs immediate attention and help - because his heart has stopped.

DON’T TELL ANYONE I WAS HERE

Ian M is a photographer currently based in Barcelona working in both film and digital photography. His exclusive series DON'T TELL ANYONE I WAS HERE explores the ideas of voyeurism and pleasure by exploring the border between loving to be observed and forgetting that someone is looking at us.

BOY COMFORT ZOOM

Yan Yufeng, born and raised in Chengdu, China, is an artist based in Milan and Shanghai. In his ongoing long-term project BOY COMFORT ZOOM, observing and exploring modern masculinity, he portraits boys and men from all over the world in places familiar to them - the models themselves pick the location for the shoot.

ALMOST NAKED

“I had just arrived in the States, I had culture shock. I was not brave enough to explore myself, so I explored myself through other people,” Shen Wei once said in an interview. The Shanghai-born, New York-based photographer created the series ALMOST NAKED by taking portraits of strangers in America. So let’s see if we are able to explore the photographer’s mind.

GENDER ROLES ARE DEAD

Anne-Sophie Guillet, Brussels based photographer, shows what it means to make gender roles fluid, or better: to make gender roles obsolete. In fashion editorials and photo series for magazines she claims that the age of stereotypes is over. It‘s all about what‘s in between.

SERES / BEINGS

Today we celebrate the LGBTQ+ community with Arden and their wonderful photo series, SERES / BEINGS. It's about the visibility and the beauty of each individual and the diversity that God has brought to this earth… or some other wacky alien.

CHOSEN FAMILY

Welcome to Daurismo – the world of Daura, a freelance film and instant film photographer. Their greatest passion is the conjugation of documentary and portrait photography to represent contrasting realities, the different paths of womanhood and the ever-expanding gender spectrum. CHOSEN FAMILY, Container Love’s main theme this autumn and title of this wonderful story.

SUMMER HOLIDAY

Asaf Einy is a photographer and video artist based in Tel-aviv. We invited him to celebrate our Summer of Love with us. Absolutely perfect for the times when not everyone has the chance to just get on the plane and fly to the beach.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

The Summer of Love continues with Kostis Fokas' latest feature on our website, CALIFORNIA DREAMING. The series was shot in California in 2019. Celebrate the sun, the colors and the California sky with us. And then let's all get naked and jump into that swimming pool together!

KISS ME I’M GOLDEN PT. 2

The Summer of Love continues with Pt. 2 of this lovely series by Annika Weertz. She joined the band Pacific Swell on their summer tour through the Basque Country, creating an authentic portrayal of a band. Jump on the tour bus with them and join the ride!

INTERZUM POP-UP GALLERY 2019

When it comes to sustainability, individualization and personalized interactions, we are definitely on board – that was our first thought when we were invited to Interzum 2019, the world's largest trade fair for furniture production and interior design.

EXHIBITION AT REEPERBAHN FESTIVAL

Container Love Art project at Reeperbahn festival 2017. Four days surrounded by wonderful artworks of powerful artists. Four days of love and diversity. And four days of fantastic singer-songwriter music, framed by artist talks, a book presentation, a movie demonstration and an amazing reading.

THE RIVER ISSUE

For this fabulous event, the Container Love 4 left its container at the MS Dockville area, which was its comfortable home for more than three years, and hacked the night at Riverkasematten next to Hamburg’s infamous Reeperbahn.

A BOOK CALLED ZWEI

The new monograph ZWEI by Berlin/L.A. based photographer Florian Hetz presents a cross-section of his work and his unmistakable visual world. In ZWEI he presents more than 200 photographs from both sides of the Atlantic facing each other and creating a dialogue between seemingly unrelated images and situations.

THE MUXES OF OAXACA

This project by Mexican photographer Nelson Morales is about the Muxe community of Oaxaca, which they are also a part of. Muxes are considered the third genre in Mexico and are quite accepted in society, however, it is not widely accepted that they have lovers publicly. In this series they enter the deepest desires and fantasies in the company of their friends and lovers.

HELLO SHERMAN

Christopher Sherman is a photographer and creative director living in Toronto and New York. We thank God that she created the Internet to bring Christopher's work to us. We have shown some of his analog works at the Container Love exhibition at the Reeperbahn festival 2017 in Hamburg.

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