19TONES

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19TONES (real name - Ernest Vadimovich Em; born August 19, 1993) is a Russian photographer and photo artist. He mainly works in the styles of portrait photography, street photography, and urban photography (industrial tourism and urban exploration). Since 2016, he has been a member of the Sony Alpha community of professionals in Russia. In 2019, he became the first Adobe author from Russia. Together with Adobe, he developed a new training format for processing digital photographs using the image manipulation software Adobe Photoshop Lightroom..

Biography

Ernest was born on August 19, 1993 in the city of Mozdok, North Ossetia. From the age of 5 he lived in Georgievsk, Stavropol Krai, an area located in southern Russia. During his school years, he won the MIPT (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) Olympiad in physics. At the age of 18 he moved to Moscow, enrolling in Bauman Moscow State Technical University, where he received a bachelor's degree from the faculty "Power Engineering".

After graduation, he began pursuing photography, exploring Moscow, and discovering new areas through his personal ​​industrial tourism and urban exploration. The pseudonym "19TONES", which he prefers using in his professional and creative endeavours, appeared 1 year later. It is composed of the number "19" and the word "tones", which refers to the tint and shade of an image. In the early years of his photography career, 19TONES received recognition from fellow photographers around the world on Instagram and 500px, two popular online photo-sharing platforms, thanks to which his photography style gained in popularity. Of note was his unique style of color correction, which he applied to a multitude of styles and genres.

According to Ernest, he is completely self-taught, not having studied photography professionally.

Career

He began his photography career with nighttime urban exploration around Moscow, which he continues to this day, expanding it to other cities around the world such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris, Dubai, and more. In 2018, his Hong Kong series went viral thanks to its publication on Fubiz, a popular site which features news on art, design, and pop-culture. In these early days, 19TONES was also actively involved in street culture, which was reflected in his photo experiments with streetwear, particularly sneakers and clothes. On October 8, 2016, the popular resource Hypebeast published his photo from the Pharrell Williams x adidas NMD “Human Race” collaboration. This photo collection featured various animals posing alongside the popular adidas Yeezy 350 sneakers.

A large part of his work has included experiments with prismatic and refractive glass and prisms, with which he creates abstract portraits. He explains it as his desire to escape from the two-dimensional space of photography. By adding additional textures, patterns, shapes, and forms that physically cannot fit into the frame due to the angle of view of the lens, he creates complex and abstract images. His work is especially characterized by night-time neon photos using prisms. In 2019, 19TONES first coined the term "prismagraphy" on his Instagram page, which refers to "prismatic" portraits that defined the direction of a new wave in photography.

19TONES frequently collaborates with both Russian and international brands, and works with contemporary media artists such as Pokras Lampas and Felipe Pantone. Throughout his career, he has collaborated on projects with companies such as Adobe, adidas, Sony Alpha, Made For Bulleit, Yandex, FollowMeTo, Asus, Gumball 3000, Aeroflot, S7, Coca-Cola, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Shangri-La, and more.

Creative projects, collaborations

Collaboration with Adobe

In September 2019, 19TONES became an Adobe author - the first from Russia. In collaboration with Adobe, he released digital photography tutorials for the image manipulation software Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The Adobe team began developing the application for mobile devices, tablets, and computers, while 19TONES selected photographs from his portfolio for demonstration of processing. In total, over 60 interactive tutorials were created to demonstrate image processing. All tutorials are available online on the photographer’s page on the Adobe Lightroom site.

Exhibition in New Manege

In 2018, he participated in the first Moscow exhibition of Pokras Lampas, "The Life of One Artist," in the historic exhibition center "New Manege". The event was held from September 6 to 27. 19TONES photographs were exhibited in the museum space for the first time. All works were printed on large aluminum composites of 100x150 cm. In a joint collaboration, various artists created new art exhibits from the photographer's works, painting prismatic neon portraits, as well as a photograph of Moscow City.

Participating artists held an art procession with 19TONES work "Moscow City" from the New Manege to the Museum of Moscow. This performance symbolized the transfer of the new work to the collection of the Museum of Moscow.

Performance at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied, and Folk Art

On February 21, 2019, artists Pokras Lampas and 19TONES held the joint master class and performance "Dualism / Perception" at the "Topical Russia" exhibition at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied, and Folk Art. While Lampas was painting a new work on canvas, 19TONES filmed the process with special glasses and prisms, projecting the image live on the walls of the museum.

Cooperation with Pokras Lampas

Painting of the square in front of Lokomotiv Stadium

In November 2018, by commission of the sports club Lokomotiv, Pokras Lampas painted the entrance area to the RZD Arena in Moscow. 19TONES was brought on to work as a photographer for the project. The area which was painted was over 11 thousand square meters. According to Pokras, this work is about "overcoming boundaries, setting new records, and changing the idea of ​​football."

Installation on the facade of the New Tretyakov Gallery

In 2018, commissioned by the New Tretyakov Gallery, Pokras Lampas created a large-scale installation on the front side of the building of the New Tretyakov Gallery, consisting of a three-meter panel dedicated to the opening of an exhibition of works by Vasily Vereshchagin, a famous 19th-century Russian painter. In the work, 18 words about Vereshchagin were encrypted. 19TONES was a photographer for this project

Wall painting of the Wynwood hotel

In July 2018, Pokras presented his largest work - the mural "Dualism" ("Д ¥ Ā Л И З М") on the inner wall of the Wynwood hotel in St. Petersburg. 19TONES documented the project as a photographer.The calligraffiti is written in two languages ​​- Russian and English, using references to symbols of different cultures. The work is devoted to the duality of perception of contemporary art, the creation of a "new visual culture".

References

This article "19TONES" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:19TONES. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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