Hatsuki Yamashita: Design Festa Tokyo

Hatsuki Yamashita's mixed media work is haunting. Yamashita's landscapes seem photographic in their detail, but the main character and focus feels empty and sinister. There isn't much information online about the artist (and my Japanese is a little rusty). These pieces were seen at Design Festa Art Fair in Tokyo. Design Festa features the work of about 10,000 artists working in a wide range of media. The two-day show is held biannually and was started in 1994. Next show date: November 10 - 11, 2012.

Carine Brancowitz

Carine Brancowitz is a French illustrator who began working as a junior art director in fashion and trend. Her simple lines have shown up in numerous magazines, websites, and blogs. Most recently, she's worked in apparel, doing a tour tee for Phoenix. She uses a limited palette, and brings in intricate patterns to create rich compositions. Her subject matter takes inspiration from fashion but has the sense of a deeper mood or story underneath.

Eleanor Hardwick

Eleanor Hardwick was born in Oxford, England in 1993. She became interested in photography at the age of twelve when she began to take photos of collectable Japanese fashion dolls. The hobby then progressed into a passion for portraiture and fashion. Having been dubbed the 'Teen Queen of Flickr' by the likes of Dazed & Confused, The Independent, The Guardian and numerous style blogs, 16-year-old Eleanor Hardwick divides her time between studying for her GCSEs and creating surreal dreamscape-style images.

Favouring post-production techniques, Hardwick shoots on a Canon EOS 400 and distorts images to look like fairy tales with a disturbed edge. Hardwick has photographed Bat for Lashes and up-and-coming musical talent Dan Black.

Georg Oddner

Georg Mirskij Oddner was one of Swedens greatest photographers from the 20th century. His career spans more than five decades. The variety of his work is endless and the subject matter boundless. Georg once said, "Everything is subject matter—the key is to express the subject so that you acquire a relationship to it."

His pictures exude careful thought and humanism, respect and human closeness. All this shines through his pictures and makes him so unique as a photographer.

JR

French photographer JR has spent the year taking portraits of victimized women in Africa, Asia, and South America, then making massive, poster-size prints, which he plasters illegally in places you'd least expect—on buildings, bridges, buses, and beyond. The idea, says JR, who doesn't give his full name in case he's prosecuted, is to celebrate the strength and courage of women who live in places where they are often targets in wartime—and discriminated against in times of peace.