November 2013 – New Landscape Photography

I take photos of places that sing to me.

This may sound odd, but never the less it is the best way to describe my experience. I may be driving my car in the middle of the night, when suddenly a place, an object, or a house, calls my attention and I cannot go any further before I have examined it thoroughly. Then I will walk the area with my camera and learn everything I can about that specific place. Learn how the different elements relate to each other; see how the place has been modified by man.

Often I need to come back and learn more about it, to find exactly what it was that called my attention. To find out what the song is all about.

When I am sensing the surroundings I try to perceive it in an abstract way. I am not interested in the object per se, but how the space, forms and different materials are in a relationship; how the communication between objects and surrounding occur. This knowing is the song.

I am not sure what I want to achieve with my photos. Maybe to question the way we see our surroundings without really seeing it and thereby make us more aware of the process of seeing.

I studied art at Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts (Department of Painting) in Reykjavik and further at School of Visual Arts (Department of Painting) in New York. Later I took an education in psychology, first at the University of Iceland and later at Aarhus University. I work as a clinical psychologist. I live in the southern parts of Denmark but consider myself to be Icelandic.

— Ragnar Stefánsson, Sønderborg, Denmark

November 18, 2013November 4, 2013

John Sanderson

www.John-Sanderson.com

“He knew at once he found the proper place. He saw the lordly oaks before the house, the flower beds, the garden and the arbor, and farther off, the glint of rails…” — Thomas Wolfe

A common theme in my work is the contextual depiction of structures implying movement.

Space changes around rail lines that remain generations after their construction, places retaining a quality of transience and continual movement. The tracks flow into the distance or cut across a picture, leaving us in wonder; and yet their confident line anchors one to its path. Once bustling depots sit forlorn, objects of aesthetic pride became forgotten white elephants. Elsewhere, tracks flow through immutable mountain passes.

These images are a metaphorical depiction of the railroad spirit that has imbibed the American psyche since its inception. The railroad has often been seen as an avenue of hope, loss, beauty, redemption, and so on. As a document of the contemporary railroad and a realization of Form between a rail line and the environment, these images are couched in a use of light, color, weather and shape that attempt to give the pictures a flickering, temporal quality — the allegorical representation of movement.

— John Sanderson, New York City

November 11, 2013November 4, 2013

Tomasz Łaptaszyński

www.Laptaszynski.com

A! (Antiquity) is a project in which I’m looking for traces of antique culture in Poland.

I’m interested in finding references in architecture and popular culture which are the result of contemporary interpretation of antiquity’s output. My inspiration is great Polish fantasy, manifesting itself in diversity and originality of ideas, mainly in the field of area development.

I’m interested in pop antiquity, roadside architecture, loose associations and whatever people in Poland remember, like and cultivate that comes from antiquity. Traditional antique culture is retreating and we are attacked by its twin sister transformed by pop culture. It is the one which builds hotels shaped like pyramids or gives birth to Trojan horses standing by the roads. They are what I’m looking for.

— Tomasz Łaptaszyński, Lodz, Poland

November 4, 2013November 2, 2013

Ibán Ramón Rodríguez

www.IbanRamon.com

The series called Bounded Land is part of the project Resistance Activities that I have developed over recent years. Resistance Activities captures those landscapes in which the relationship of man with nature becomes visible. Man does not conform to inhabit the planet; he is trying to dominate the land and own it.

Bounded Land makes visible the desire of men for control of territory, delimiting spaces. Man establishes borders every few meters to exploit the land, to declare his exclusive use. Each of the fences is a scar in the landscape, an attempt to stop the free and natural development of nature. Finally a vain attempt to control, because nature is resilient and will remain beyond any human attempt to master it. This fact is also reflected in some of my images.

— Ibán Ramón Rodríguez, Valencia, Spain