SEARCH, THERE'S MORE.
Unemployed spaces
The German photographer Jana Stolzer doesn’t hesitate when she cuts reality in a decisive, immediate, clinical and almost rude way. In doing so, she return us straight and insidious descriptions of places, made of images filled with emotions and closer feelings.
«“Amerika” is the name of a series of photographs, which is not made in America. The name describes the past of a neighborhood in a city of Germany. This place has a different architecture from other districts because of the occupation of the Americans in the 50s. This area was rebuilt to create a residential area for the American occupation troops. After 50 years we can still see clearly the signs of that story. Each time we arrived there, it seems to enter a different world, far from Germany, a few square kilometers of small abandoned America. Here, time seems to stand still, as the district has not changed for long time. Everywhere concrete structures, functionality and everything is labeled with numbers . (more…)
Courtesy of Jana Stolzer
www.jana-stolzer.de
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Constructions of landscape
The attention that Noah Beil has for the landscape is certainly not trivial, but moves from the desire to understand the relationships and perceptual dynamics that exist in connecting with the environment. Thus a introspective search, a kind of self-analysis that deepens the dialogue between what is inside and outside her personality, with very interesting and well-balanced results from an aesthetic point of view.
«My interest in landscape photography developed naturally from my enjoyment of exploring exterior spaces. I am happiest when my photography is an extension of my life, an enhancement of experiences I would seek even without my camera. “Berms and Drumlins” grew out of my interest in understanding the aesthetic distinction between natural and manmade environments. I searched for places with differing degrees of constructed landscape features - some partially man-made and some built on landfill which were entirely man-made. (more…)
© Courtesy of Noah Beil
www.noahbeil.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Sign and significance
Approaching the vital work of Lee Friedlander, undoubtedly one the most influential photographer of the last century is equal to questioning the main scope of photographic representation, addressing a complex as immediate visual essay on it. As a matter of fact the American landscape of the Sixties and the Seventies told by Friedlander’s lens can be defined “social”, fragmented and chaotic as full of paradoxes and constant references to cultural issues whether open or concealed. And the language itself is nourished by the same fragmentation and by the same wealth. As we were facing a worn-out and well-known American postcard and be denied an instant later. Only superficially the represented places return known and recognized patterns, while these individual windows upon the so-called normality and everyday banality are lightning glances deeply imbued with uneasiness and disorientation. (more…)
© Lee Friedlander. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.
www.fraenkelgallery.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Sinless
It’s hard not be fascinated by the pristine visions of Jan Koster. Words sometime are not enough to tell about artwork. His work on dutchscapes photographs express the need to embrace that “something” which hides behind beauty. We could name it nature, world, universe. It’s this tension that releases emotions and reflects the essential human desire of pushing the view beyond. Describe beauty with images rather than words. There is a inner silence radiated from the most intact landscapes. A silence that comes from harmony as a balanced expression of the elements that compose visual perception. Elements that Koster represent with ability, by measuring the shapes and lines, by mixing colors and light in a discreet and never aggressive poetry. With the series Sine Labe Concepta the Dutch photographer seems to move forward his linguistic expressivity to a higher complexity. A thought which we find also in his words.
© Courtesy of Jan Koster
www.jankoster.info
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Distant poses
The work of the talented british photographer Tom Hull focuses on intermediate and transitional spaces, so called non-places. We are glad to feature here his beautiful series Mehicana with its own brief story.
«With a central population of nearly 9 million people, extending to almost 20 million in the greater parts, Mexico City is undoubtedly one of the most populous cities in the world. If New York is said to ‘never sleep’, surely Mexico City never stops beating, dancing, partying and thriving. The city, however, is only one tiny factor in a country of immense cultural and environmental differences.
It is only once the confines of the city have been left behind, that evidence of this constantly evolving country becomes more apparent.
Whilst lucky enough to be journeying through Mexico for a month, I was captivated by the vast range of landscapes, people, civilizations, customs and history that have built this amazing place. (more…)
Courtesy of Tom Hull
www.tomhull.co.uk/
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Beneath the surface
“Underground Landscapes” by the Berlin based photographer Timo Stammberger depicts subway tunnels of cities such as Berlin, Dortmund, New York, Philadelphia, Lisbon or Stockholm. These tunnels are part of large, well-branched mass transit systems, which are used by many people on a daily basis, playing an immense though hidden role in the life of today’s metropolises.
«By calling these underground scenarios “landscapes”, I links them to other urban infrastructure like the “Autobahn” (the Highway), sharing the similar, purely functional purpose. However, for most passengers on their way through the underground of cities, the tunnel environment creates only one picture: a dark, black something, passing by the window. The French anthropologist Marc Augé writing about “Non-Places” says that space of the non-resort creates no particular identity, and no special relation, but loneliness and similarity. Based on constructivism and due to my previous work as a graffiti artist, I experience and show the subway tunnel as a “Place”. The tunnels gain identity through my photographic interpretation of the various carefully chosen subway systems.»
© Courtesy of Timo Stammberger
www.timostammberger.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Wake up and fill it up
A very well-fitting title accompanies the project of the duo Tribble & Mancenido which offers an effective as unusual cutaway of what is like working with heavy trucks on the roads of the United States.
«Trucking is a precarious lifestyle and we set out to make a body of work that would make truckers the heroes of our economy. We wanted to step away from the misconceptions and stereotypes people had of truck drivers, showing a softer and beautiful side of their the blue collar labors. The series was inspired by James’ father, after spending time riding with him in his truck. We hoped to understand a widely unknown culture and what it’s like to support your family being married to the road, so we decided to become bona fide truckers working for one of our country’s largest hauling companies and lived on the road for a full year. Our images focus on the silent moments of obliged waiting and the anonymity of such a culture. Wherever you go throughout the country, trucker areas generally share similar landscapes and aesthetic. We photograph these spaces, signs and objects familiar to this load-carrying way of life, hoping to bring the harsh beauty of the American trucking culture to a wider audience.»
© Courtesy of James F. Tribble and Tracey F. Mancenido
www.tribblemancenido.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Beyond time
There are may ways to describe nature. Anna Shelton does it by portraying essential and picturesque atmospheres that seem to be suspended in time. Does nature belongs to the time rather than to ourselves? Behind a magic and subtle patina that distinguishes her Polaroids lies a deep respect for what is able to withstand to the past and to fascinate the soul of the observer, and to stimulate his imagination, whether they are landscapes, things or emotions. Nature thus takes a dignity through the need of some memory. That of the Portland based photographer is a patient look, resting rather than intrusive, which falls in a quiet and pristine vegetation, slipping on water and between the colored and tenuous reflections, to find with poise and discretion an intimate balance.
«I’m still trying to find my voice with photography, but am realizing more and more that I’m drawn to nature and subjects that seem to have stood the test of time, or are barely hanging on! My idea of a vacation is to simply wander around forgotten places with my camera. It’s definitely a form of escapism. I have a rather unhealthy obsession with old stuff. It’s comforting to think I can recreate this personal aesthetic through my photos».
© Courtesy of Anna Shelton
www.flickr.com/photos/zipco-and-cal/
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
What lies behind the eyes
The project of Paul D’Haese, pointedly called Dayblind, moves at different levels closely related to each other, investigating the many roads of perception, paths that eternally fork, put it to Borges, and also raising questions about the primary meaning of photography. Portraits of faces with eyes closed, indicating a clear reluctance to a direct dialogue with the observer, are accompanied with shots of landscapes and architecture that display the same type of approach, just as alienating and covetous of references, almost as if the extreme minimalism and the sparseness with which these are represented were the strict rules of a universe bounded in a severe and unshakable way, or a few bright fragments of it. Often a sharp black and white becomes the main tool to support a direct and never pushy language, ruthless and precise as elegant and full of suggestions. The result is a criticism to the very act of vision, a suggestion to face the failure of photography to represent reality, as essentially invisible, leaving the appearances as the only possible guides when you are as blind and groping in the deep dark of the interpretation of reality.
© Courtesy of Paul D'Haese
www.pauldhaese.be
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
One human nature
Solitary and anonymous figures depicted as immersed in space seem to oddly measure oneself with the environment, looking for a position and even more for a fair dimension. The photographer attends to these distant scenes to build up a moment, a suspended time as expression of being a human in a certain place. In a way landscape is there but would it still be there without a tangible presence? What is its real role on this planet? Are we daydreamers there for it, among the waves, the trees, the rocks? Into the nature. Words are like musical notes they need a pause after a while. Imagination doesn’t, and so images flow everywhere. Catch them is a possibility for Marilia Destot to capture time. «In this selected series, and often in my work, I isolate one character in the landscape, playing on scales and shapes. I pay attention to both confrontation and fusion between human and nature. […] My photography work focuses, through portrait and landscapes series, on the relation and perceptions of the model to his environment. (more…)
© Courtesy of Marilia Destot
www.mariliadestot.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Album of memories
Wenzhou is a coastal city in China, a port from which whole generations have taken off to new worlds. Stories of migration that are sometimes reversed, like the one of Xiaoxiao Xu, Chinese photographer now living in Holland, who has returned to her hometown with a desire to embrice her memories of childhood. Although mature, her gaze preserves poetry, innocence, and curiosity. Maybe we like her work because of it. Because she returns compassionate as much as gentle images, full of memories, never critical. It is the eye of a romantic girl that in a imprudent but patient way reveals emotions, lingering on the details, on the small signs of everyday life, on quiet gestures and faces embellished by a deep dignity. Bringing emotions, reveal the beauty as only children can do, find the places of a past that will never be far away if we really want it. There is a subtle need to dialogue with the nature. Almost as if plants were the most faithful guardians of the memories and of the most intimate truth. Xiaoxiao Xu thus pushes us inside solitary courtyards, rooms, unusual paths, and domestic perspectives. That of nature appears as presence often discreet and modest, but indissolubly necessary to live in the city.
© Courtesy of Xiaoxiao Xu
www.xiaoxiaoxu.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Traumatic realism
Geert Goiris’ photography investigates the notion of wilderness as a cultural construction. We talk with the belgian photographer about his ongoing book-project Resonance. «I seek out places where human presence has a efemeral and fleeting aspect: the landscape as a transient place. In many of these places time itself is no longer measured out on an anthropomorphical scale, but moves on with an invisible - immensly slow – pace, a geological instead of a human timeframe». Sometimes the inaccessability of the site itself plays an important role, «the romantic notion of exploration, the sensation of seeing something for the first time, not only as an individual, but also as a society is a tremendous inspiration. And I like to use the camera’s to record this unique encounter». There’s a reason for choosing extreme places: «I want to show wilderness, the world without us, without humanity, just land and terrain unfit to sustain human beings. Being in hostile surroundings shows how much is at stake. (more…)
© Courtesy of the artist, proposed by Outlandish Photography
www.geertgoiris.info
www.outlandish-photo.be
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Universal parodies
Ana Kraš, young Serbian artist, uses photography in a creative and glib way. Hers is a diary depicting naturally unusual aspects of daily life, little unintended follies, ambiguities, moments pleasantly surreal or so, curiosity and perplexity. What emerges is a tangled situation that well represents that confused, lively, silly, dramatic and at times paradoxical human world to which we all belong. Images of apparently normal places follow one another as tracks of an universal parody, without a beginning and an end. So many chunks of stories that intersect for a moment with our own. Accidentally we share like passengers a space that now no longer has borders. A sense of belonging increasingly bland and widespread, an emotional landscape only partly unknown, since the geography is everyone and no one.
© Courtesy of Ana Kraš
www.anakras.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Offish peaks
A light-toned story, made of unsaturated words emerges from the work of the pair Maximilian Haidacher and Magdalena Fischer. Scenes drowned in pastel green color stand out on the background of a discreet mountain landscape.
Broad gazes, sometimes contemplative, alternate with close and relaxing poses of anonymous particulars. Little by little these expectations reveal a mountain less enchanted, almost surprised by the presence and behavior of its visitors. It may happen that the eyes of the viewer become the eyes of the mountain and that the scenes depicted assume a moving, fake, human and sensitive appearance.
There is a pleasant self-pity in the naive things and tracks that scattered hither and yon increasingly become small and distant.
A mature consideration that reflects a conscious stupor and innocent admiration.
© Courtesy of Maximilian Haidacher and Magdalena Fischer
www.maximilianhaidacher.com
www.magdalenafischer.net
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
Hometown glory
«This work is about the things you hold on to when you can’t let go». Is there anything we can do about the past? The places we belong to. The places that we didn’t choose. Justin Visnesky has an answer that is revealed through his photography. In a quiet and simple way he freezes his surrounding to visualize feelings. A simplicity and immediacy of expression also detectable in the words that tell us about his photography: «Taking the ordinary and making it something more, something for the keeping». Explicit as the few lines that describe us his hometown series “Jimmy Stewart doesn’t live here anymore”: «Jimmy Stewart was born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania; a small town boy made good. I spent my formative years in the same place. Growing up in a small town is tough. Growing up in a small town so stuck in the past it can’t seem to move forward is even tougher. When I was young I longed for city life. Now I live in the city and long for that small town life. Every time I go back it feels like nothing has changed – and for the most part, not much has. Jimmy’s statue still greets town folk in front of the courthouse, streets still bear his name, and his namesake museum still shows his films every weekend».
© Courtesy of Justin Visnesky
www.justinvisnesky.com
(click on the image at right for more pictures)
