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In Eugene Von Bruenchenhein's ramshackle suburban home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there hung a hand-incised metal plaque proclaiming his multifaceted identity:

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
Freelance Artist
Poet and Sculptor
Inovator 
Arrow maker and Plant man
Bone artifacts constructor
Photographer and Architect
Philosopher.

Sadly, these proclamations reached only a very select audience: his wife (and muse), Marie, and a small circle of friends and relatives. As far as the outside world was concerned, Von Bruenchenhein's plaque simply read:

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
Bakery Employee

Though undiscovered by the public until after his death, for forty years Von Bruenchenhein spent his time off from his bakery job immersed in the lives his plaque described: he painted apocalyptic landscapes and phantasmagorical beasts, sometimes using delicate brushes fashioned from Marie's hair; he created miniature thrones and spindly towers using TV dinner chicken bones and model airplane glue; he molded botanically inspired ceramics out of the clay from his backyard, and fired them in his oven; he wrote poems and kept journals of his philosophical musings. He also lovingly and obsessively photographed his wife, to whom he dedicated all of his work, leaving us with a touching document of their playful, imaginative private world.

Von Bruenchenhein's portraits of Marie have the same erotic charge and bracing intimacy as the more well-known photographic paeans of the past, from Charles Dodgson's tender (and, admittedly, slightly creepy) portraits of his child-muse Alice Liddell, for whom he wrote his Alice in Wonderland books, to Alfred Stieglitz's studies of Georgia O'Keeffe. But whereas Dodgson and Liddell played dress up, and Stieglitz and O'Keeffe worked to exude an austere, regal beauty, the Von Bruenchenheins summoned up a glittering fantasy world that was cobbled together out of supplies from their local five-and-dime. Here Marie became pinup and ingénue, jungle queen and dream Goddess; she inhabited a world of glamour and excitement alien to her surroundings, made manifest by the camera's lens.

Considered historically, the portraits can be seen to inhabit a space that gingerly straddles the line between modernist experimentation and cheesecake pin-up camp. Some of the photographs, such as the striking double exposure of Marie wearing a crown of Von Bruenchenhein's design, recall the surrealist photography of Man Ray, while others, with their raucous, clashing textiles, bring to mind the work of the eminent self-taught Malian portrait photographer Seydou Keïta and the post-impressionist painter Édouard Vuillard. Sometimes, however, there are gestures towards a more lowbrow pedigree: when the eroticism is amped up and Marie's costumes take a more fetishistic turn, it is hard not to think of the recently deceased pioneer of pin-up kink, Bettie Page.

Of course, as Von Bruenchenhein was creating his work in virtual isolation, coloring it with a litany of precedents seems beside the point. What is most important to recognize, particularly as the art world begins to slog through the aftermath of its most recent gilded age, is Von Bruenchenhein's unabashed passion, not just for his wife, but for the creation of a life that was rich with interest, wonder, and invention--no matter who was watching.

For three years, Warsaw-based photographer Przemyslaw Pokrycki has been traversing his country, stopping at one family gathering after another. By now he has photographed about 80 festivities: baptisms, first communions, weddings and funerals. Some take place in old-fashioned, simple community halls where they wash down their cream tarts with Pepsi-Cola served in paper cups; other are held in ostentatious halls with stucco ceilings and covered upholstery. This is a journey to the heart of Poland.

Pokrycki's images show family members carrying out traditional rituals. "The whole environment reveals something about people's social background. Even if I wore my best Armani suit, my surrounding would betray my origins", say Przemyslaw Pokrycki, describing his work. In keeping with a tradition of Polish photography, he is creating a sociological archive of society, much as Polish photographer Zofia Rydet did until 1991.

Pokrycki explains his interest in his own country: "My photos are my way of describing the world around me. It's a reality I know well, but sometimes it surprises me, too. I don't seek to document extreme situations in my photography, like war, hunger or catastrophes. For me, the most exciting subject is society itself - especially given the changing conditions of daily life since the political changes of 1989."

Przemyslaw Pokrycki was born in 1974 in Poland; he lives near Wassaw and works as a free-lance photographer for several Polish magazines. He studied photography at the film academy in Lodz. in 2007 and 2008 "Rites of Passage" was shown during Photomonth in Krakow, in 2007 Pokrycki also took part in a group show in Houston, Texas. His representative in Poland is the ZPAF i S-ka Gallery in Krakow. The exhibition is actually shown in V8 Gallery in Cologne/Germany.

Perú, Viaje al sol by Juan Manuel Castro Prieto

Perú, Viaje al sol is a revealing exhibition by Spanish photographer Juan Manuel Castro Prieto that has been traveling through Latin American since October 2008. The project started in one of the most captivating cultural contexts of the world: the sacred valley of the Incas. From his first contact with the Peruvians, Castro Prieto has developed an extensive body of work that has taken him through nearly all of Peru's regions -the 'jungle eyebrow', the highlands, the coast, the Amazon Jungle- as well as through many of his personal and professional interests.

Castro Prieto began taking pictures of Peru in 1990 when he traveled to Cuzco to print the work of the early 20th century Peruvian photographer Martin Chambi. Chambi was a perfect paradigm for Castro Prieto and the resulting prints are widely regarded as the finest ever made. He packed up his recently opened black and white print studio in Madrid and disembarked to Lima to what was to be an experience that changed not only the way the work of Martin Chambi is read throughout the world but also the way Castro Prieto understands photography and Latin America. Since then, he has made 11 return trips that have marked his photographic practice, guided his personal growth and strengthened his interest for all things Peruvian: from its people to its literature. The photographer has become, indeed, a connoisseur of Peru through its faces and its landscape.

The exhibition Perú, Viaje al sol is made up of some 130 impeccable black and white prints first shown Madrid's Centro Cultural de la Villa in 2001. Since then, it has been waiting for the opportunity to be shown in its original context. As part of a large program of exhibitions and conferences, Juan Manuel, along with his multiple Peruvian friends and memories, is now touring Latin America.

The exhibition can be read, as its title suggests, like a journey. Not only the journey of Castro Prieto to Peru, but that of the viewer towards the fascinating land of the Incas and beyond, that of the photographer towards the legacy of Martin Chambi, and also and perhaps most importantly, that of Juan Manuel to the depth of his self. He describes the various series of images as having sprung from a possibly naïve approach to the new, the exotic, which then turned into a questioning of his own values and the ideas that the West has of all things foreign. With the same honesty that the artist read in Chambi's work, he now faces his own production to find a different Peru than the one he dreamt of when he was a child. This is, in a way, is the visual story of a dream come true.

The images, with a documentary and anthropological shade are, needless to say, stunning. Large formats combine with smaller prints to convey a diaristic impression where images and places take up space in our notebooks and memory. The exhibiton is exactly that: the journal of a trip into the inner self of a land, a man, and a civilization.

'Perú, Viaje al sol [Peru, A Journey to the Sun]' will continue through Latin America in 2009.