May 2013 – New Landscape Photography

Hopewell. My hometown.

The event of going home is a complicated one. Although I moved to Hopewell as a child, it has never truly been a place that I could relate to or feel a part of. In fact my earliest intentions were to leave as soon as possible, and although I did just that, I cannot deny the soft spot in my heart that it still occupies or the pull back that still consumes me. The story I present here is less about a town and the people that live in it and more about my relationship to it — a marrying of both the frustrated teenager I was, and the sentimental adult that I am.

Once a thriving port during the Civil War, Hopewell hasn’t seen its heyday since. Today it struggles to keep its economy afloat and the local grocery stores in business. Unlike many American cities, Hopewell isn’t on the decline. In fact it has been about the same my whole life — a small, unchanging factory town in central Virginia. It is a city that seems to make futile attempts to re-establish itself but somehow slips tiredly back into what it was before. This is a place where trying seems to count as much as doing, traditional southern values still rule, and optimism is born but seems to fade away quickly in the southern heat.

I’ve often wondered why this parcel of Virginia seems to be standing still and unchanged. Now, years later I’m finding that I might just be looking at it all wrong. Maybe my lens of success doesn’t matter here, maybe it’s not even right. Maybe all that some people, some places need is simplicity and continuity –- maybe they don’t need the next step, and maybe they don’t want it.
Maybe here hoping is enough.

— Eliza Lamb, New York City

May 29, 2013May 19, 2013

Spencer Murphy

www.SpencerMurphy.co.uk

Inspired by the countryside in which I grew up in, my pictures explore man’s relationship with nature and as a force that exists separately and in conflict with the world. If the pictures appear staged, it’s a nod towards the order behind things. If they seem dark or set the viewer ill at ease, then it’s in recognition of the chaos that underlies that order. If they represent a world at once familiar and yet utterly alien, that’s because it is our own.

— Spencer Murphy, London

May 27, 2013May 19, 2013

Max Li

www.MaxLi.nu

River Indus is the place I often visit at weekends. It is located in one of the few quiet suburbs. However, with the introduction of the government’s massive urbanization plan, both sides of the river will be transformed into a huge residential area which houses more than 100,000 dwellers. Over the past winter, I went to the banks and tried to photograph the places that haunted me repeatedly.

This project documents the temporal existence of the suburban landscapes and the beauty of everydayness. It explores the tension between temporality and transcendence.

— Max Li, Hong Kong

May 24, 2013May 19, 2013

Bob Avakian

www.BobAvakianPhotography.com

The camera is a mirror that allows me to see my surroundings with new eyes while at the same time becoming more aware of myself. Out at night, alone, the day’s cares recede and the sense of time fades. Allowing a heightened awareness to take over, I direct my attention to conveying the quiet and solitude of the night. It is this shift in attention, I believe, that allows me to experience the moment with a different vision.

I photograph the landscape at night and at dawn. The camera captures the frames as stills, freezing time, regardless of the length of the exposure, and creating an image different from what the eye perceives. I like to believe that these resulting images are from a moment suspended between night and day.

My exposure and printing decisions enable me to take the surroundings I know so well and present them as they have not been seen before. What fascinates me about this process is that magical element of surprise. I venture out in search of scenes that contain an unknown light source of have some other mysterious quality. Of course there are times when I don’t find anything. Since the night sets the stage, I never know where I will wind up. It reminds me so much of life.

— Bob Avakian, Edgartown, Massachusetts, USA

May 22, 2013May 19, 2013

Kimberly J. Schneider

www.KimberlyJSchneider.com

I am drawn to desolate land and seascapes. For me, making images is a meditation of sorts, a search for truth. While I am intrigued by the formal qualities of the areas I photograph, there’s something about shooting in the land and sea that releases my innermost thoughts and somehow transfers them to my photographs.

In this digital world, I remain a purist. I shoot black & white film and print my images in my darkroom. I primarily shoot infrared; I appreciate the way it appears to turn the world inside out, as well as expose what the naked eye cannot see.

Point Lobos & Beyond began in May 2010, when I made images in California for the first time. During that trip, I learned that I could stay at Bodie House. That moment changed my life, photographically speaking.

Since my early days of photography, I had dreamed about shooting in Carmel, specifically at Point Lobos, where the masters who inspired me did. I spent two days there, photographing and immersing myself in everything Weston. I even got to go in Edward/Kim’s darkroom.

As I was shooting in Point Lobos, I could almost feel the spirit of Edward Weston guiding me, and I suddenly realized that I had found the place that I truly connected with. Making photographs there had a profound effect on me and changed who I was as a photographer.

In spite of the fact that I was drawn to Point Lobos by Edward Weston’s images, my images are about my spiritual journey. This body of work is ongoing and I’m still not entirely sure where it will take me.

At this point, the images are about exploring Point Lobos, and other areas in Northern/Central California, from the ground on up and beginning to understand what it is that I have always been looking for.

My search for answers continues. I recently returned to Point Lobos and am just in the early stages of printing the new images. My concept will continue to grow and take shape as I learn more about these images during the printing process

— Kimberly J. Schneider, New York City

May 20, 2013May 20, 2013

Alon Koppel

MAY 20 Alon Koppel

www.NotLikeHere.org

A quiet, subdued anthropological look into the tension on the surface of the earth, and the constant struggle between nature and humans. The boundaries we lay down, when, where and why and happens to them over time.

The photos observe places and spaces. Between what appears, what’s not there yet and what disappears. I seek a simple description of life with these photos. And even though the moment captured looks like it can be captured again, it will never be the same.

I was always interested in photographing physical and virtual borders – the space between us and our surroundings – and what we do to those locations. The photographs often manifest that by showing subtle ecological issues. Things most other people walk or drive by without care or notice.

— Alon Koppel, Red Hook, New York, USA

May 16, 2013April 24, 2013

Brooke White

www.BrookeCWhite.net

Over the past decade my major works completed, which include large-scale photographs and non-narrative films, investigate how globalization and technology effect our connection and disconnection to the landscape and place. The New South Project investigates the ways in which the global economic market and technology has distanced our connection to place thereby creating a radical form of displacement to landscapes in the global south.

This project began in Bangalore, India, where I was a Fulbright Scholar in the fall of 2012. I went to Bangalore to photograph the changing landscapes of the city and the country due to the booming IT sector. This project has expanded to include the Deep South of the United States, in states such as Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, where the oil industry dominates. Each location in The New South Project is facing many challenges due to globalization some of which include, environmental degradation, displacement and political instability. The New South Project investigates how new hybrid identities and landscapes are developing as a result of globalization.

The images are coupled with Google map images as a way to investigate the idea of lived experience of place versus a virtual one. In today’s environment it is very easy to virtually visit anywhere in the world, but what does it mean to physically embody a landscape or to have a landscape or place embody you? This project tries to answer these questions.

Additionally, there is a Google map, which can be seen here, that investigates the concept of embodiment interactively.

— Brooke White, Oxford, Mississippi, USA

May 13, 2013April 24, 2013

James Kullmann

www.SometimesIWander.com

My project The City in Color is a sort of love song to my new home in the Pacific Northwest. Cities make for strange landscapes. Workplaces, parks and homes all swirl together into a pattern that is in and of itself a living thing. I spend a lot of time observing and documenting urban and suburban spaces. I’m drawn to scenes that present interesting juxtapositions between us and the land we live on.

— James Kullmann, Seattle, Washington, USA

May 9, 2013April 24, 2013

Fleur Alston

www.FleurAlston.wix.com

This project documents places with dark histories that are reflected in their names. I am searching for an echo of that past.

In exploring the concept of what’s in a name I want to see if that mark of history has seeped into the bones of a place. The use of long exposure flattens and alienates the images which I think somehow encompasses the feelings these places inspire in me.

— Fleur Alston, Maidstone, Kent, United Kingdom

May 6, 2013May 6, 2013

Kalo Vicent

www.KaloVicent.com

I always work from an intimate perspective.

The industrial areas are a constant in my walks, especially after working hours. I also explore winter resort areas and abandoned fields. I’m interested in the disappearance of the functionality of the site, and the appearance of its genuine essence, the ancestor of the territory that not so long ago was wild.

In my photographs I try to capture this transformation and the resulting entropic energy.

This project, Around the Factory, shows the inhospitable nature of our industrial areas and the failure of urbanized industrial society. The project also questions the status and depressing aesthetics of these areas where man goes daily to his job.

We can see from the photographs that there are plants: unemployed, hopeless, maintained by the system or function in a representative of the company, or demonstrate against their environment. Ironically, in the photos appear plants as allegory and representation of the roles of human beings in these — our areas of work.

— Kalo Vicent, Valencia, Spain