Paul Alexander Knox

SEPT 30 Paul Alexander Knox

www.PaulAlexanderKnox.com

The Space Between explores the different phases of social housing and regeneration via compulsory purchase order sites. Homes were demolished to make way for a new wave of regeneration to come. The collapse of the market has left these areas as liminal spaces, spaces between. I have photographed the remnants and marks left on the land where homes previously stood highlighting the once vital infrastructure that now stand as odd objects separated from function.

Social housing was built to house the working class, creating thriving communities constructed around an industrial heart. During the early Thatcher years those community members were given an opportunity to own their homes through a statutory right to buy, with discounts beyond their wildest dreams. 1.6 million council properties became private homes. Simultaneously the industries began to close down, splintering the communities, turning neighbourhoods into “council estates” dotted with privately owned homes. The estates became rife with unemployment and “antisocial behaviour,” leaving the homeowners to watch the slow decline of the community. The economic prosperity of the new millennium found these estates out-dated and over-run with social ills yet positioned on prime real estate. They were eyed for higher value regeneration, the council tenants were rehoused and the homeowners given CPOs. Not all home owners, many now retired, were willing to sell their homes for the dramatically reduced rates offered. The demolition of the vacated council homes began around them. The collapse of the market stalled this process leaving many proud homeowners with their spruced-up houses isolated and often attached to derelict and dilapidated shells.

The issues that led to the breakdown of communities have not been addressed: unemployment continues to rise and the “antisocial” have been moved on to other estates. The future of social housing is uncertain, as is the future of these spaces; the spaces between.

— Paul Alexander Knox, Gateshead, United Kingdom

© Paul Alexander Knox

Alex Howard

© Alex Howard

www.Alex-Howard.co.uk

The Ditch is a survey of a small area (approximately 9 acres) of land in the midst of development, photographed over an extended period of time; an exploration of the photographer’s potential role as archaeologist through the study of excavations and analysis of physical traces left on the landscape. 

Although the development is mainly away from street frontage, the area is not archaeologically sterile. Previous archaeological interventions have revealed that the meadow is generally characterised by worked soils with only sparse evidence for occupation; medieval and later landscaping, backfilling and dumping.

Walking The Ditch I often encounter discarded materials; the foremost signs of a human presence besides the marks of machinery. These photographs call into question our complex relationship to the landscape; why is it that we examine remnants of the past with fascination, yet disregard present-day development and dumping as an eyesore; at what point does our detritus become artefact ? 

Alex Howard, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, United Kingdom

© Alex Howard

John Toohey

© John Toohey

www.JohnToohey.net

The Doĝu Ekspres — the Eastern Express — winds through Turkey from Istanbul to Kars, near the border with Armenia. Without any delays it takes 36 hours — though everyone expects it to be more like two days. Geographically, it leaves the Marmara Plain, rises up to the Anatolian Plateau, enters the eastern mountain ranges and ends up on the edge of the steppe that spreads to Siberia. Culturally it is a journey through Turkey’s complex social diversity and its history as well. It leaves the modern industrialization of Istanbul for large scale agriculture and ends up in a part of the world where ancient farming methods are still practiced if not preferred. Scattered along the way are the remains various empires and cultures have left as signs they once claimed territory as theirs: Greek, Roman, Seljuk, Ottoman, Armenian and Russian. It is a part of the world where every square metre has been fought for, brought under control and often as not abandoned.

— John Toohey, Montreal, Canada

© John Toohey

Larry Torno

© Larry Torno

www.LarryTornoPhoto.com

Letterbox is a collection of panoramic photos reminiscent of the cinematic formatting of large screen imagery. By purposefully placing black bars at the top and bottom of each photograph, I’m making the statement that this is the original intention of the composition.

The Letterbox images take on the look and feel of Hollywood movie sets, often void of any characters, but left wide open for interpretation and the viewer’s imagination. We surmise that these photos have been taken prior to or just after an event. The blank scenes invite audience participation and encourage scrutiny of details in search of a plot or sequence of action.

Getting an audience to stop, examine and interact with 
my photographs has always been a priority in presenting my art. I recall a college professor from many years ago who would project a photographic portrait of someone we’ve never seen before and say “Tell me everything we know about this person.” It was an excellent experiment to teach us to look for clues, hints, details, backgrounds, moods or emotions in a photo and translate those observations into words.

— Larry Torno, University City, Missouri, USA

© Larry Torno

Antoine Séguin

© Antoine Seguin

www.AntoineSéguin.com

The first photographs of the series titled “les allées du château” have been taken on a moody Sunday of November of 2011. I was leaving my hometown by a small road that I take. At the edge of the city, something has changed in the landscape, I realized that a new suburban housing was growing. I shot a roll with my Yashica Mat, just to keep it in mind.

Time goes by, I naturally keep coming here at more or less regular intervals, always on the weekends, with my Mamiya RZ67. I am becoming aware of my role as a witness. It’s a necessity for me to keep documenting the evolution of this place.

More than 200 photographs later, I decided to publish this series on my website, partly to show that more than 90% of houses built in France are constructed without architect. Actually, as an architect born and raised in such suburbs, I’ve developed an avid fascination for landscapes that I go through, my surroundings as inspiration.

— Antoine Séguin, Créteil, Val de Marne, France

© Antoine Seguin

Zack Herrera

© Zack Herrera

www.ZackHerreraPhoto.com

While the rest of LA was designed to “drive-in,” Downtown Los Angeles is a “drive-in & drive-out” experience. In a famously decentralized Southern California, Downtown is a default metropolis. During the day, it plays the role of “city center” well. The urban “hustle and bustle” is properly represented. Taxi cabs, pedestrians, and congestion are plentiful. But at night, after the cast and crew drive home, downtown LA resembles an empty film set. The movie being filmed there was about a city of the future; a city with no past and no name, a postmodern “Emerald City” where our dystopian fears of the future have in some ways been realized.

Downtown Oz was photographed in Downtown LA from 2009 to the present and is ongoing. A majority of the field work was done on foot from the perspective of a pedestrian, a “Dorothy-like” photographic exploration. Some of the photographs were taken at locations that have appeared in popular movies. Other photographs were taken while film crews are in live production, and the remaining images are seemingly quintessential cityscapes. My exploration of downtown Los Angeles finds a city where the boundaries of representation and reality are in a state of constant flux, a city whose own simulacrum references itself.

— Zack Herrera, Los Angeles

© Zack Herrera

Mary Dondero

© Mary Dondero

www.MaryDondero.com

Seven Hours of Devotion represents the transformation of what was a private sensory experience turned into a fixed visual form. This work is an expression of time as it was experienced while wandering through the Utah wilderness where I allowed myself to both reflect and ruminate without restraint. I walked for over seven hours, resulting in an altered state of being which inspired me to create artwork suggesting that experience. The work is deeply personal and expressive, but definitely not random or arbitrary. Each image was created with long exposures while panning the camera, producing evidence or leaving a trace of my movements. The images are printed at a width of 44 inches on Hahnemühle matte bamboo paper. To help share the original sense of immersion that I had during my experience, I display them as an isolated group.

— Mary Dondero, Rehoboth, Massachusetts, USA

© Mary Dondero

Jörg Marx

© Joerg Marx

www.Marx-Photography.com

My series, titled A Summer Night in the Village, is concerned with village nightscapes. The project is about the transformation of the village environment at nighttime. While the city plunges into a sea of lights at night, the village is barely lit by few street lights. Nightlife in the city is full of people and cars that populate the street. In the villages, the paths and streets are silent and deserted. There is no activity which deflects from the interplay of the pale light and the building environment. Suddenly the whole of the village ensemble is divided into individual spots of light. You walk through the village from light into darkness back to the light, only to be surrounded by complete darkness immediately. A strange atmosphere lies over the village. Some people interpret it as an atmosphere of abandonment and loneliness; some even do perceive it as menacing. For me, the mood has something magical.

— Jörg Marx, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany

© Joerg Marx

Eric Baden

© Eric Baden

www.EricBaden.com

These photographs, a selection from a project entitled In/Between: Time in the Desert (2008-2012), investigate the visual display of time in the Peruvian coastal desert.

Amongst the driest regions on earth and wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains, this desert features ephemeral river valleys, frontier settlements, failed and prosperous agriculture, marine fossils, prehistoric remains, surfing condos, and lines of transport and communication both ancient and modern.

In the larger work I consider the landscape from several views and timeframes — examining structures of momentary stability and the influences of memory and anticipation on the perception of the environment. The group from which these photographs are selected, multiple exposures made from busses traveling along the Pan American highway, present a layered view of the passing landscape.

While working in the region I’ve considered the writings of the American artist Robert Smithson. In a text that accompanies his series of mirror interventions into the landscape, Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan, Smithson reveals several layers of thought. Offering at first his own conviction, followed by a quote from Santayana, who references Schopenhauer… I’ve felt a bit of all of them.

“Artists are not motivated by a need to communicate; travel over the unfathomable is the only condition.

        Living beings dwell in their expectations rather than in their
        senses. If they are ever to see what they see, they must first in a
        manner stop living; they must suspend the will, as Schopenhauer
        put it, they must photograph the idea that is flying past, veiled in
        its very swiftness.”

— Eric Baden, Asheville, North Carolina, USA

© Eric Baden