Forging the temporary

«To survey landscape, I usually set bounds to an area and relentlessly walk it. In an attempt to reveal the signs and symptoms it contains. Signs of what - I’m not really sure. Yet once linked together in a series, my images become a fiction, my fiction. My practice then consists of striding along, trying to decipher something without quite knowing what it will be. But I keep on until I feel I’ve exhausted the chosen area.»

Knowing what is around us, moving from the inside, ask questions, become aware of the human dimension of things. A present within a continuous progression, hardly ever halted like our eyes, a constant transformation of matter that always arises from the intention to change the environment, to understand it and understand ourselves. Frequent and temporary destinies which are constantly reflected on us and on the pages of history that we write more or less consciously. As in this work of French photographer Pascal Fellonneau, almost anonymous like a universal dialogue made of signs and traces left by a microcosm in progress.

© Courtesy of Pascal Fellonneau

pascal.fellonneau.free.fr

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A new idolatry

«What is the relationship between landscape and divinity?» From this question starts the beautiful photographic research by Andrea Gaio. A even more interesting survey considering that its object is a territory, the contemporary Veneto, from which the industrialization and the last decades of breathless racing seems to have erased or at least partially eradicated all traces of local traditions, popular culture, and with it the signs of a persistent religious identity, in favor of a standardized or, in someway “Americanized” aesthetic. The relationship highlighted by the Venetian photographer between the landscape fragmentation and the inhabitants need for belonging is curious and appropriate, a feeling to reaffirm or to sometimes completely rebuild. «The image of the surrounding landscape», says Andrea Gaio, «is ambiguous, beyond the control, speaks of its inhabitants as a result of their actions but at the same time does not belong to them, because it arises from a spontaneous creativity, a need to communicate through symbols, written messages that are intended to advertise products, but that sometimes seem more like unheard help messages, objects that tend to a more deep meaning.» The ancient and marginalized gods find their space in the form of new everyday-life idols, spontaneous signs of more or less explicit tributes to a new religion, that finds in the individual and in the affirmation from his rural roots the true object of worship.

© Courtesy of Andrea Gaio

www.andreagaio.com

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Ghosts and sand


Unlike the series “Middletown“, the new project by Douglas Ljungkvist gives more emphasis to composition, obtained through a precise use of light and color. A dreamlike description with pastel shades that enhances the details and subtle differences. In addition the swedish photographer is clever in creating a silence and a quietness which is perfectly suited to the atmosphere of emptiness and waiting into which beaches usually fall during off season. A new document on the American landscape developed with elegance and discretion.


«Despite being an addicted world traveler it is the New Jersey shore that I find to be one of my favorite places to return to. Having vacationed here a few times in previous lives I’ve have long wanted to return to photograph at Ocean Beach. It’s the most democratic of beaches. Except for a few cottages on the fringes; all the lots are the same size. The cottages (some might say are nothing more than glorified trailers) are laid out in a grid over three sections that total 2,000 units. Even the names of the sections are democratic, Ocean Beach I, II, III. Not much has changed since Ocean Beach was constructed in the late 40’s to offer working class families an affordable vacation alternative. The streets are still made up of sand which adds to the strong sense of place. There is not much vegetation that thrives in this environment made up of sand, wind, and salt. But what little vegetation there is stands out and tends to be of different pine needle varieties. In the uniformity of the cottages there is still individuality including the ice cream colors that I like to “collect”.»

© Courtesy of Douglas Ljungkvist

www.douglasljungkvist.com

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Luminous tricks

Considered the major work of Koo Sung Soo, Magical reality seems to celebrate the South Korean artists dreams with eyes open. A reality deliberately spectacular, close to being a fiction of itself, it reveals the act of photography in its essence. Almost grammatically irregular, it reaches for pure and expressive subjectivity. «If art is an expression of the self, then what could be said about photography?» asks the artist. This is a question around which he constructs his narrative, sometimes immediate and sometimes illusory, as perception often is. And if so, what better than the distressing and alienating side of imported reproductions of buildings, or symbolic forms of entertainment, or trivial as well as artificial commercial sceneries, could signify the surreal dimension of society? A desirefor manipulation which permeates the environment and reflects the need of the artist to no longer control reality through technology but with his own language.

© Courtesy of Park Ryu Sook Gallery from the artist Koo Sung Soo

www.parkryusookgallery.com
www.koosungsoo.com

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Standing on the world


Alive. So seems the photography and the attention that Meral Güler gives to the environment and what appears or performs within it. Relentless and irreverent, sometimes ironic and subtle, the artist ignores the canons of wink, judicious and politically correct aesthetic to give vent to a personal poetic voice. Her scathing style, reflects the need for scraping from the social conscience the last crumbs of humanity. Shots that express a deep subjectivity and a desire not to surrender to reality.


«My photographic approach is documentary and conceptual realism, combined. These images are from an ongoing body of work that questions an internal conflict with displacement and cultural difference. I instinctively, seek out everyday realities that reflect social condition. I am looking for a narrative that goes beyond the immediate and suggests a socio-political undercurrent, often with a fleeting human presence, within a prosaic environment. The images are a connection and disconnection with nature, culture and self, in an attempt to portray a spirit of resilience, a redeeming irony.»

© Courtesy of Meral Güler

www.flickr.com/people/meralguler

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Ground splits


Close encounters with nameless spaces, scraps of landscape certainly but strangely sensitive. Andreas Doerr unequivocally reflects upon the condition of the land with immediacy and with shots that cut through reality, almost to bare it and enhance its substance.


«In general, I’m interested in what is known as the “Man-Altered Landscape”. Especially in the interface between nature and culture. My photographs are kind of a portrait of a place. Some of those places, like in Almost Nowhere and Interstate, are barely noticeable if seen in their natural context. In those cases the photograph and the place are almost becoming the same thing. For the Roadworks series, an additional dimension, namely time, plays an important role. Roadworks shows the irreversible process of altering and shaping the landscape. The places shown in Roadworks existed only for a very limited amount of time in the condition and topology photographed. I employ a documentary style, certainly influenced by the Dusseldorf-School of photography. My photographs are not documents, however. For that they are to subjective and biased by my perception of a place. In addition, they clearly show the presence of a photographer in how they are framed and taken.»

© Courtesy of Andreas Doerr

www.flickr.com/people/adoerr

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The right distance


In the end it is really just a matter of scale. Throughout a lifetime we do nothing but leave our markings on things and on people, on the trampled floors and on the edges of steps, or on the furnishings that we clumsily chipped. Also, there are some signs we carry with us, with time, like the trunks of trees. Only if we step out from everyday life, passing through centuries and the millennia, and we open the door of our room to what is out there, then the world talks about the more or less obvious signs that time, nature, or very often man has inflicted upon it. Yet the world body incorporates them. It is no coincidence that Gianpaolo Arena uses the most appropriate scale to watch – and through his eyes to show and describe – a microcosm. And he does so with measure, with the delicacy of the elusive observer yet with dazzling lucidity, without blurring, as if the game, however perfectly successful, is to highlight the levels of complexity with which the story of a place and its history could be told. Closed ecosystem and geological anomaly, persistent trace in the territory and virtually unassailable subject, the hill called Montello with its peculiar form which is located just south of the River Piave retains its centuries-defined character of “island”, although through time it has been the mirror of many needs and attempted uses that failed when disconnected from ecology. Once a forest of oaks that Serene Republic tapped for the Arsenal, now is an example of how man affects the surface of earth, how deeply he deforms and bends the landscape to his will, inhabiting and giving his name to it, but also of how nature gradually takes hold and takes possession, preserving the merely human remnants, in a sort of regeneration. But this is only a fragment of a story that, once the scale has changed, becomes so broad that its margins cannot be read, because it is still open. In the photographic series devoted to this story by Gianpaolo Arena, thanks to a mature interpretation combined with an almost objective immediacy, the Montello becomes a story told through images, a carved stone to be read and interpreted, an inlaid necklace in whose carvings something else could be seen, without the need for explanations, as immediate responses to a living and breathing present, portents of whole lives perhaps yet to come.

© Courtesy of Gianpaolo Arena

www.gianpaoloarena.com

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Almost islands


The photographs of Paris based artist Cyrille Weiner are created in a documentary style and difficult to pin down in words. However, his work consists of a very rich vocabulary. Mainly we observe places, although not always recognizable because his emphasis is placed on the interpretation rather than on the meaning encoded in these spaces. Cyrille Weiner frequently surprises us with the ease and consistence with which he manages to appropriate space, to create dialogue for his subjects as if they were actors who needed to explain the situations depicted. It is this inherent subjectivity, which characterises and transcends his photographic record, that determines his artistic sensibility. Through his various projects, from which we have selected a few images, Weiner browses through several geographic, urban and social issues, trespassing upon ambiguity but without exacerbating the consequences. A portfolio that strikes us because it shows fragilities that we know, the spirit of adaptation of the contemporary animal known as man,who is free to explore paths or pretences more often controversial and incomprehensible than real.

www.cyrilleweiner.com

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The cannibal city

It almost seems that the city in its ongoing transformation fails to wipe out all signs of its past. David Schalliol, sociologist, a discipline that informs his photography, underscores this idea with a clear and elegant series of images that speak of buildings left on their own rather than abandoned, situated within too distant spaces. Buildings that by resisting with their statuary loneliness give us a measure of the speed and the voracity with which the urban organism feeds on itself through a sort of housing cannibalism.

«The Isolated Building Studies arose from my sociological and aesthetic interests in rapidly changing neighborhoods in Chicago. Seeking an expression of urban transition, I selected buildings without immediate neighbors because their urban form clashes with their seemingly quasi-urban setting. Given our understanding of urban buildings as embedded in an immediate community of structures, this tension prompts questions about the circumstances leading to isolation and, when viewed as a series, about the commonalities and distinctions of neighborhood change.»

© Courtesy of David Schalliol

www.davidschalliol.com

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Gordian knots.


It is something that is well understood before having confirmation from the words which accompany this project by Lauren Henkin, that moves in the depths and insists like a buzz that cannot be fully heard, like a vague feeling to which you can not give a name. It’s something that is connected with the need to know yourself, even before knowing the world and the people who belong to it. The path that led the American photographer to address this touching series dedicated to the landscape – but not only – of Nova Scotia is more like an inner journey than the one undertaken to discover and then reach out to the isolation of this region of Canada. With surprising frankness Lauren leads us to the door of her inner world, makes us part of a particularly painful moment of her personal and emotional experience, shows us how artistic expression, and in her case photography, can be an extraordinary means through which to find ourselves. Shots of crystalline beauty in dazzling black and white – which is the language of memories and, and as many say, of dreams – reveal ancient fears close to the current anxieties, tells us of histories of forgotten ancestors who had entrusted their fears as well as their hopes in the melancholic essence of this landscape, and tells us of the displacement, perhaps even more profound, of the present generations, always looking for that something to which you can not give a name, not yet. And the thick northern fogs, like the intricate woods are nothing but thresholds to cross, symbolic places that once penetrated is to become lost, and from which to leave, renewed and stronger.

© Courtesy of Lauren Henkin

www.laurenhenkin.com

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Last imprinting


There is no doubt that at the center of Nathan Ellis Perkel’s photography there are people with their semblances, appearances, and their presence. Not searching for significance but particular signs, almost a latent need to paint the everyday world in its crude normality. Familiar and youthful situations, curious and sometimes contradictory, more often, simply existing. The life of humans in its free form and expression. A calm review of quotidian life, grafts of stories brought back unpretentiously yet with elegant composition and feeling. A portfolio made largely of portraits but also of places, fragments of time intersected for a moment instead of spaces designed to represent. A human landscape that binds more to personal experience rather than to an investigation. About the series Just Passing Through. «I had intended to speak of mans fleeting existence on earth, and the lasting imprint we leave» says the photographer with a degree of candor that serves his artistic purpose.

© Courtesy of Nathan E. Perkel

www.nathanperkel.com

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Green wars


The photographs of Anna Collette explore the conflicts and problematics inherent in the contemporary habitat. Her representations, far from being compromises and ideological filters, challenge and interrogate the landscape, almost as if she was willing to rewrite our expectations without souring them too much. A fresh vision, an exemplar, unaltered, that appears to be more of a reproach rather than a regret. A warning not to get distracted and our spirit swallowed by extraneous or cynical convictions such as what occured to nature depicted in her series.


«These plants were originally brought to the American northeast for erosion control, but over the years have spread throughout the area and have taken over the native species. For support, they wrap their vines around the native plants, but this blocks the sunlight and their support system eventually dies. There is a poetic sadness in this invasion that is not unfamiliar. Much like any invasion, it is violent, swift, and irreversible. The entire world depicted in these photographs has turned green – and while it appears quite peaceful and serene there is an underlying tension that consumes it.»

© Courtesy of Anna Collette

www.annacollette.com

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Speechless


It starts randomly the special journey that Jessica Ingram takes through the memorials and historic sites of the southern United States. A way to quest after the memory and the choices that people or a society makes, and their impact on individual communities as well as the landscape. In her website the project is documented in every stage through short descriptions. A story not to be missed…


«Five years ago, I wandered downtown Montgomery in the sweltering heat, picked up a walking tour trail, and found myself facing a large, ornate fountain, situated on a brick pavilion. A Historical Site sign said that I was standing in the former Court Square Slave Market, where slave traders sold men, women, and children to the highest bidder. It presented cold hard facts, detailing dollar values for slaves at the time and how none were given last names. I was speechless. The fountain with its plumes of water arching through the muggy air and landing into fresh, bubbly froth mocked the shameful history of the place. Moreover, the language printed on the sign was so void of sentiment – in no way testifying to the experience and meaning. I watched people pass by and wondered if they knew or thought of the history beneath their feet.»

© Courtesy of Jessica Ingram

www.jessingram.com/

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Crosswise

 

Meeting the work of Rachel M. Wolfe means slowing down. In the series presented here you may find yourself looking out the window or towards a window. An exercise that is almost a metaphor for the need to look inside and outside of us. Is a search for meaning and a connection with what is around us, to get to talk and maybe share sensory experiences. Is about feelings: seeing the invisible and shaping the inexplicable. The words of the life-taught writer and photographer speak of this quest for meaning.

 

«Not Even But Almost is an investigative look at contemporary life and its unsatisfying nature. By looking intimately at perceived ideals of happiness in the out-there, we can understand how our in-here situations of containment and discontent are created. The understanding of the mind creating a mutually agreed upon reality becomes apparent in these external manifestations, unconsciously creating perpetual unsatisfactory situations. The relentlessness of discovering almost-understanding continues to persist through the inherent flaws in human nature. Through this work I hope to help viewers discover, the quest for wholeness is disguised in our pursuit of happiness.»

 

 

© Courtesy of Rachel M. Wolfe

www.rachelwolfe.com

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Watching memories


Documenting the roots, habits, customs, expressions as colors and forms of identity of the American landscape underlies the extraordinary photographic research called Prairieland. A way to lessen the distance between reality and the imaginary, to play on clichés and slowly discover hidden qualities. A poem made up of places that are able to surprise and intrigue. That’s what happens with Dave Jordano’s Duck Blinds series: the viewer is carried away by his curiosity. Jordano with great skill works within contrasts. The space becomes a cold, minimal, white and unqualified stage to enhance matter made of tangled natures. Makeshift structures, unremarkable only in appearance, are able to charm by slowly revealing a unique personality, made of small signs and diversities. And it’s from these slight but significant variations that all the humanity of Jordano’s study is shown. A landscape void, where silence prevails and where temporary shelters for hunters float as if suspended in an existential vacuum. Traces of forgotten stories. Hunting stories about men and prey, traps and hiding places, moments and long waits. Memories rather than stories that Jordano must document as he is aware that soon they will be taken away by time.

© Courtesy of Dave Jordano

www.davejordano.com

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