Tito Mouraz

© Tito Mouraz

TitoMouraz.com

Open Space Office was shot in Portugal over a three-year period and represents a transformed landscape that portrays the existence of Man as a constructive, reconstructive and contemplative being. The landscape appears completely and irreversibly transformed and it was this transformation that caught my eye and fueled my interest in conducting this project, basing it on this very landscape.

The work presented aims to portray a reality that suffers an ongoing daily process of rapid transformation. Therefore the pictures show a temporary reality inserted in a natural landscape undergoing progressive transmutation. They are unique and imposing spaces with a undeniable visual impact which bestow on the images a strong formal and plastic content. I would like to emphasize that these were the aspects I concentrated on and attempted to visually portray the best that this intervention could present to the eye, both in relation to the formal configuration and in relation to the chromatic and lighting harmony that characterize these spaces that create a unique environment. In this way, we can behold a dialogue between Nature and Man’s action, between harmony in a texturized cutting and what develops in it, what involves and transforms it, as is particularly visible in the first images of this series, that portrays the idea of an organic whole.

I find it difficult to transmit on film the personal experience and all that one feels and observes at these immense and torn sites, where silence is felt in an unnatural and intimidating way. It is a well-known fact that an image cannot replace reality. That is why I chose to include parts of a hidden horizon or an incomplete landscape, in this way suggesting a different perspective, since the proximity to these sites which grow in the opposite direction to what is normal, are usually unobserved by the spectator — almost giving them the chance to rebuild them.

— Tito Mouraz, Porto, Portugal

© Tito Mouraz

© Tito Mouraz3

Dan Mariner

© Dan Mariner

DanMariner.com

Drake’s Folly is a photographic book focusing on the oil region of Pennsylvania, and particularly the town of Titusville, where in 1859 Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the well that started the modern oil industry.

I journeyed through the region in search of hints to the past boom in oil production and the vast infrastructure that once dominated the landscapes. I was keen to see how the region has fared since the oil industry began to focus its attention elsewhere in America.

After the emergence of stories of a black liquid which was seeping from the ground, the then-fledgling Seneca Oil Company sent Col. Edwin Drake in search of this elusive substance. After much frustration and ridicule, on the 27th of August 1859 and at a depth of 69.5 feet, Drake made a discovery that would change the planet forever. 

Unbeknown to him, Drake had made a discovery that would not only illuminate peoples’ homes but also radically transform the evolution of human civilisation.

— Dan Mariner, London, England

© Dan Mariner

© Dan Mariner3

Paolo Fusco

© Paolo Fusco

PaoloFusco.com

INSULAE is a project aimed at describing the search for isolation that the walls built around the new buildings of the new Roman suburbs represent.


While in various parts of Europe new ideas in shared housing are being built, in Rome the goal seems to be to close citizens behind walls which separate them and keep others away.

These photos were taken in the suburbs of Rome, built in the last decade with little public coordination and supervision, in an incoherent urban environment.

The only common feature of these new suburbs is represented by the walls which enclose every block and every building, and completely isolate the residents from the outside, in a growing climate of distrust and fear of the other.

This seems to me as a clear symptom of how the Italian society has changed in the last years.

— Paolo Fusco, Rome, Italy

© Paolo Fusco

© Paolo Fusco3

Thomas Wrede

© Thomas Wrede

Thomas-Wrede.de

For the past 20 years, the vantage point of my work has always begun with a deep emotional need to be linked with nature and the question of how this is presented within today’s media.

In the series Real Landscapes (2004 – 2013) I explore the boundaries between simulation and reality. The world is reproduced as a sort of model kit. Large impact scenes are presented on a very small scale. Images and replicas vacillate between the idyllic and the catastrophic. Using simple means, I create novel worlds of imagery that exist exclusively through photography, by photography, as a photograph.

The ideas for my pictures are driven by impulses from the worlds of art and media, and I complement these with images of personal significance. I stage commonplace miniature toy models into real landscapes: on North Sea beaches, in coal dumps, and on garbage heaps.

— Thomas Wrede, Münster, Germany
translation by Stephanie Klco Brosius

© Thomas Wrede

© Thomas Wrede3