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Seb Janiak is a photographic artist whose work explores conditions in which opposites can co-exist, revealing the visual characteristics of the hidden forces that shape the physical universe. He creates images that blend science with creativity and analytics with the poetic. He lives and works in Paris, France. Janiak began his career as a graphic designer. While freelancing, he engaged with state-of-the-art technology, becoming a pioneer in the field of digital photography. His work gained him global attention, and he expanded into music video directing, fashion photography, and finally into fine art. Since 2009, he has focused on expanding the potential of contemporary analog photography and has only used basic photographic tools. Janiak says, “I only allow myself the techniques which have been used in analog photography since 1850. Namely, making adjustments to contrast and exposure, and using superimposition.” When a special effect is needed to achieve a particular shot, he finds a way to achieve it manually rather than through digital manipulation, for example by using refraction (a prism) or reflectivity (a mirror). The fantastical images Janiak produces may seem impossible, but they are in fact pictures of the physical world that surrounds us at all times. Janiak is interested in duality and the unseen forces that inhabit the space between what we perceive of as imaginative and as scientific. His work thus serves as a photographic bridge between data and creativity. Janiak believes there is no separation between science and art. The apparent dichotomy is only a way of conceptualizing the multiple simultaneous states of being at work in the visible universe. Whether his inspiration comes from a philosophical inquiry, a spiritual question, or a revelation about the nature of physics, in the end, he circles back to all three areas of thought, using one as a departure point, but in the process capturing what is beautiful about all. French designer Philippe Starck wrote, “Seb has shown that the impossible can be achieved. . . .He has done a lot (that is to say he has committed himself completely) to try to draw us into poetic spaces, with a rigor that sets him apart from his successors. Each of his images, each of his artistic gestures, has elegance and madness which are both natural and structural. I will forever be grateful to him for this reason, how many artists can be said to bring our dreams and visions so strongly to life that they are with us every day?” Janiak’s work is widely collected and has been exhibited globally, including at Art Basel Miami and FIAC.

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

Find original abstract paintings, sculptures, prints and other art on 1stDibs.

Find a broad range of photography on 1stDibs today.

The first permanent image created by a camera — which materialized during the 1820s — is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The French inventor was on to something for sure. Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later. 

Digital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide. 

What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal?

Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records — provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. Horst, Lillian Bassman and Helmut Newton, who altered the face of fashion and portrait photography; visionary documentary photographers such as Gordon Parks, whose best-known work was guided by social justice; and pioneers of street photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who shot for revolutionary travel magazines like Holiday with the likes of globetrotting society lensman Slim Aarons.

Find photographers you may not know in Introspective and The Study — where you’ll read about Berenice Abbott, who positioned herself atop skyscrapers for the perfect shot, or “conceptual artist-adventurer” Charles Lindsay, whose work combines scientific rigor with artistic expression, or Massimo Listri, known for his epic interiors of opulent Old World libraries. Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron was given a Kodak camera as a child. Later, she shot on Polaroid film before buying her first 35mm camera in her teens. Barron's stunning portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol and other artists chronicle a crucial chapter of New York’s cultural history.

Throughout the past two centuries, photographers have used their medium to create expressive work that has resonated for generations. Shop a voluminous collection of this powerful fine photography on 1stDibs. Search by photographer to find the perfect piece for your living room wall, or spend some time with the work organized under various categories, such as landscape photography, nude photography and more.