Author: Willson Cummer

I'm a fine-art photographer and teacher who lives near Syracuse, NY, USA
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Beth Saunders

www.BethSaunders.co.uk

My use of photography is quite often a means of expression. Underlying tones relate to family, fear, control and ultimately death. This series is a seasonal exploration, documenting the movements of objects on this land throughout the space of a year, without revealing the cause of their presence.  

I document my subject matter instinctively, as a way of preserving times past, capturing moments of banality, which more often than not are overlooked or taken for granted. I pay attention to spaces and subjects we may disregard, to avoid feelings of loss or regret. I use the still life of the image and the long exposures to represent the existence of this object or place, beyond the photograph.

— Beth Saunders, London, United Kingdom

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Vincent Bezuidenhout

www.VincentBezuidenhout.com

This body of photographs, titled Separate Amenities, examines the way in which the landscape was constructed to enforce separation, in the form of separate amenities, during the time of apartheid in South Africa. The recreational spaces I have focused on previously functioned as separate facilities for different racial groups on every level of society, including separate beaches, parks, walkways and swimming pools.

By exploring this recreational landscape, constructed through political, social and psychological factors, a view can be obtained of how the physical structuring of the landscape has been altered to implement control and separation. It reflects a level of social engineering, through a flawed political system of racial segregation, which has led to spaces of ambiguity, incongruity and ultimate failure.

This reveals the many ways in which ideology has shaped our landscape and comments on the fact that despite the failure of apartheid, the structuring of the landscape in South Africa has had a lasting affect, which as Okwui Enwezor said is “an entirely unique specimen of the historical failure of moral imagination” in South Africa.

My practice is situated within the notion of the landscape as a construct and I view my images as photographic constructs which foreground the ideologies of those who created these spaces. The philosophy of segregation inherent in these apartheid structures reflects elements of control, fear and power: elements which today acts as evidence of a time and modus operandi of the creators of that system.

— Vincent Bezuidenhout, Cape Town, South Africa

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Jahmad Balugo

www.JahmadBalugo.com

The abundance of churches and the strong influence religion has on the community in the American South was a bit overwhelming, coming from the West.  In most neighborhoods in the Savannah area you can find a church on every other street, regardless of where you are in the city. Locals tell me “This is way it has always been and this is how it’s going to be until we perish.”

Vernacular architecture is a category of architecture based on localized needs and construction materials and reflecting local traditions. Vernacular architecture tends to evolve over time to reflect the environmental, cultural, technological and historical contexts in which it exists. It has been dismissed as crude and unrefined, but also has proponents who highlight its importance in current design.

No matter what church I go to I am always throughly interested in the structure and the location of each of these buildings, and what varies from structure to structure based on the location.

— Jahmad Balugo, Savannah, Georgia, USA

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Martina Shenal

www.MartinaShenal.com

This ongoing body of work is an exploration of the peripheral, the insignificant and sometimes monumental spaces within the Inland Seto Sea islands in southern Japan. I’m drawn to intersections of public and private, natural and the built environment, literal and metaphorical boundaries that offer protection as well as isolation. Acknowledging that place suggests an experiential encounter and space points to the unknown, these images invoke the dichotomy of an intimate encounter against the distanced backdrop of foreign observation. They are, in one sense, more about the act of looking than a narrative about place. Though they involve a detailed transcription of place, they operate within the perpetually-passing, moment–ambiguous fragments of the material world.

The title of this series, Borrowed Views, is loosely based on shakkei (borrowed scenery/views), a stylized perspective strategy used in traditional Eastern landscape painting and 17th-century Japanese garden design. In the former, vistas are overlaid to influence the way the eye perceives near, middle and far distance; in the latter, a nearby landscape monument is framed within the garden to create a meticulously-constructed focal point. Referencing a conscious manipulation of the natural world, these images evoke both real and imagined thresholds and boundaries, and refer back to the mediated construction of reality within the photograph.

— Martina Shenal, Tucson, Arizona, USA

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Michele Bressan

www.MicheleBressan.ro

The Romanian landscape is presented by archiving scenes from my immediate surroundings and typical everyday situations, from the areas I could relate to as my landscape. The images are realized avoiding the research of a typology, letting the viewer spot common patterns, in order to go beyond the topographical aspect, and imagine the whole context.

The landscape became a container of situations and relations, describing the aesthetic relationships between landmarks coming from both the Communist period and the current reality. The objective representations of how architecture intervenes in space, mixes with spontaneous and universally-valid elements, together enabling the formation of a time and site-specific imagery of the Romanian landscape.

By showing how a simple scene from the everyday life tends to appear complicated by the simple reproduction of it — because usually the sum of details can’t be spotted on the fly, I’ve chosen to fix and enlarge details and situations, offering a larger angle of view, and the possibility to choose how to approach the image.

— Michele Bressan, Bucharest, Romania

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Patricia McCormack

www.PatriciaTallulagh.wix.com

The subject I am dealing with is located in North County Dublin, and is the largest working quarry in the Republic of Ireland. Many people do not realize the quarry exists, and also do not realize the city they live in and walk through everyday is build from the material extracted from here.

A quarry stands as an enormous symbol of the consumption of raw materials by the modern world. These images show the spaces left behind when the rock has been removed, and search to find beauty in the aftermath of a destructive process for beauty can be found in the most desolate of places. The subject matter calls into question the constantly changing topography of our landscapes in order for humanity to build its desired world. As we dig down in order to build up, we destroy in order to create.

— Patricia McCormack, Dublin, Ireland

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Ruth Dudley-Carr

www.RuthDudleyCarr.com

My work is a visual diary, exploring historical events and memories, mixed with fictionalization. I use the landscape as a surrogate for self, with the images living and breathing via atmosphere and light. The images feel like an experience, either personal or interpreted. There is a cataract quality, a solemn chroma, and a patina that is evaporating, which is an attempt at forcing the viewer to consider location as emotional space rather than geographic.

— Ruth Dudley-Carr, Quincy, Massachusetts, USA

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Helena Rovira

www.MemoriesOfAnOldTree.com

This is the first series that forms a part of the project Le Bois/El Bosque, that studies the forest environment of the Pyrenees, which shelters the highlands between Spain and France.

I develop a dialog with the territory and the mass constructed by man, now left behind. That which does not appear in road guides receives attention. With it, the places without a panoramic view add interest to the story of the project, catching the common landscape as an element that covers the traveler on his way.

— Helena Rovira, Barcelona, Spain

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Christina Lange

www.ChristinaLange.com

I am drawn to working on environmental photo stories. What fascinates me the most is the interaction between humans and the wilderness, and how extreme the care for the wilderness can vary between people from the mentality of nurture and bestowing love and care to treating any open space, as long as no one can see you, as a potential for abandoning items one no longer needs. It is this contrast that informs the totality of my work.

This particular project focuses on the sad truth that for some, the wilderness is a convenient place to throw out, discard, leave behind whatever they need to get rid of. That is the story behind Basura – Southwest USA, a most breath-taking area, where unfortunately the eye gets jolted repeatedly by left-behind trash. This is a world-wide phenomena and I continue to photograph other regions I am privileged to travel to.

— Christina Lange, Salton City, California, USA

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Sarah Orr

www.SarahOrrPhotography.com

Adrift is a series of photographs representing the insecurity felt by many, due to the state of contemporary society.
 
The disparity occurring between the magnitude of the landscape and stature of the lone subject suggests feelings of precariousness and isolation, while simultaneously invoking the sublime.  Although the scenes may initially demonstrate a level of quietude, a sense of vulnerability emanates from the distinct dissimilarity. The presence of the sea and the positioning of the solitary character in relation to its enormity, references the figurative notion of being on edge. The subjects’ adoption of a stationary state, where their next move is unclear, refers to the effect that one’s circumstances can have over their demeanor. Their gazes into the distance hint toward looking elsewhere for comfort and release as well as to the desire of being removed from their current situations; sentiments increasingly prevalent for modern-day society.
 
The series references the work of the nineteenth century Romantic landscape painter, Caspar David Friedrich, whose themes of isolation and solitude convey a retreat from modern life in order to pursue an alternative deepened spirituality.

— Sarah Orr, Dublin, Ireland