Japanese photographer Ikko Narahara.

In his early work Narahara focused on people who were living in isolation from the everyday world, such as monks in a Trappist monastery or the inmates of a women’s prison. His work aimed at creating a “personal document”, he aspired to “a process of laying bare the inner form by thoroughly depicting the exterior” (Ikko Narahara).

Walking a tightrope between description and abstraction, objectivity and a personal narrative, Narahara transcended the journalistic documentary photography then prevalent in Japan. Furthermore, Narahara displayed a particular facility for abstraction and the staging of everyday scenes in strict graphic compositions.

In your sight are nine orbs, or rather globes, by which all things are held together. One is the celestial, the outermost, embracing all the rest, the Supreme God himself, who governs and keeps in their places the other spheres. In this are fixed those stars which ever roll in an unchanging course. Beneath this are seven spheres which have a retrograde movement, opposite to that of the heavens. (M.T.C.)

Leonardo Betti aka Leonardoworx (LWX) from Italy.
Submersed in abstract fibre 3D.

Get a Sony A7s, pump up the ISOs and be overwhelmed by beauty.

Index and credits:
1. Italian former legend of free diving swims up during an apnea course at deepest pool in the world for free and scuba diving. (Olivier Morin / Getty Images)
2. A shovel is placed over coal briquettes during a protest in front of the chancellery in Berlin. (Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters)
3. Coast Guard members conduct flare training on Plum Island, Massachussetts. (U.S. Coast Guard / Petty Officer 3rd Class MyeongHi Clegg/handout / Reuters)
4. A Buddha sculpture is seen through red strings, which is part of an artwork on display at a shopping mall in Beijing.
5. Indian labourers work at a cotton processing and packaging industry in Kadi. (Sam Panthaky / Getty Images)

Every morn­ing, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day.

That’s why I hate these New Years that fall like fixed due dates, which turn life and human spirit into a com­mer­cial con­cern with its neat final bal­ance, its out­stand­ing amounts, its bud­get for the new man­age­ment. They make us lose the con­ti­nu­ity of life and spirit. You end up seri­ously think­ing that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new his­tory is begin­ning; you make res­o­lu­tions, and you regret your irres­o­lu­tion, and so on, and so forth. This is gen­er­ally what’s wrong with dates. (A.G.)

Put on your headphones.

Alvvays – Dives – 2014
Moderat – A New Error – 2013
Run The Jewels – Angel Duster – 2014
Aphex Twin – Syro U473t8+e (Piezoluminescence Mix) – 2014
Daniel Lanois – Space Love – 2014
M83 – I Need You – 2014
Arca – Now You Know – 2014
Future Islands – Fall From Grace – 2014
Ariel Pink – Four Shadows – 2014
The Field – No. No… (John Tejada Mix) Cupid’s Head Remixe II – 2014
Banks – Waiting Game – 2014
Caribou – Back Home – 2014
Uochi Toki + Nadja – Pluton, Neptune, Uran – 2014
Lawrence English – Graceless Hunter – 2014
The Horrors – Mine And Yours – 2014
Craig Armstrong – Crash (Feat. Brett Anderson) – 2014
Hundred Waters – Seven White Horses – 2014
Jon Hopkins – Breathe This Air (Asleep Version) – 2014
Mr Twin Sister – Blush – 2014
Vladislav Delay – Viimeinen – 2014
Marissa Nadler – Dead City Emily – 2014