While looking at some shots from one of my favorite rising photographers, Zeb Daemen, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far we’ve come since the likes of Guy Bourdin, and the increasing overlap in influence that all arts have on each other. Where Bourdin took advertising images by storm through the introduction of a strong narrative in his work, Daemen is at the forefront of a tendency to go beyond even narrative and approach abstraction. His shots still have some sort of lingering tale to tell, but if you really take a moment to look at his (and many other photographers’) shots there is a trend toward an immediate beauty that is often idiosyncratic and irrelevant to the product. For his time, Guy Bourdin’s departure from the mere functionality of commercial photography was strong, and now Daemen and his peers work like Modernist painters, with an awareness and exploration of their medium that takes the same ambition and runs with it. Very cool.