Faces Made Strange: Oleg Dou
Placid nuns with milky alien-beauty faces, glowing children with otherworldly skin conditions, and the most ordinary faces made strange by details such as a chalk-white complexion, a subtle change in proportions, overly-glassy eyes. These are the images of Russian artist Oleg Dou, who combines conventional photography with graphic rendering techniques to produce matching portraits of unsettling consistency.
Like many other good things, Oleg Dou’s art was introduced to me by Elegy Magazine. Elegy just released Issue 52, which features Alexander Hacke, Thurston Moore, Tim Burton/Johnny Depp, Nick Cave and Lisa Gerrard.
March 25th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Our people! Oleg does a great job depicting a strange and eerie alien society, at least tome. I imagine an entire planet filled with these soma-high porcelain automatons.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I noticed immediately that none of these subjects have eyebrows. There’s something about a lack of eyebrows that makes a face look alien, like a plastic mask.
March 25th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
To me the faces are beautiful and quite calming though I’m curious to hear what others think…mainly because the color white means so many different things all over the world.
March 26th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Oh God yes! I found him in Elegy as well when I picked up Issue 52 last May in Germany.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:15 am
Nixie – very true. I’ll bet sweaty moshpits are a nightmare for these folks! ;)
I used to date someone who habitually and brutally plucked out their eyebrows for aesthetic effect – weirdly, it proved to be far more of a head-turner than even the most dramatic piercings I’ve hung out with. And the interesting thing was, people often weren’t quite sure why they’d felt compelled to do a double-take…the effect registers in your subconscious immediately, but it can be kind of hard to put your finger on if you’re not used to it!
I wonder if there’s an actual documented phobia of eyebrows/lack of them out there? It’s a sufficiently unusual-looking affectation to merit one, I’d guess. Margaret Thatcher was famously afraid of beards, and wouldn’t allow them in her cabinet. Pogonophobia, I believe it’s called. It’s a weird one for sure – almost as if, in the words of one Mr Bill Bailey, she saw the chin as somehow being the window to the soul…
Oh, and ps, I’m posting this from snowy Gothenburg, by the way. This being Coilhouse, I couldn’t really not mention that, could I? :P
October 5th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Excellent work of Oleg Dou make the photography a challenge, pushing us to see no limit of fine art photography and digigraphy!
I admire his work and as a photographer, I recommend him for study to the future generations!
August 16th, 2012 at 7:39 am
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