Willson Cummer – Page 65 – New Landscape Photography

When I moved to Brooklyn in 2009, Newtown Creek was this great mystery lurking to the north separating my neighborhood of Greenpoint from Long Island City in Queens. I knew it was considered one of the most polluted waterways in the nation, but there was a lot that I didn’t know because the creek is hidden from view and walled off on all sides by industry.

After a year of digging I found layers of history embedded in the banks of the creek, dating back to the dawn of industry in the United States. Today on the surface one sees a wasteland stripped bare by generations of degradation, but the areas adjacent to Newtown Creek still serve as an important role in New York — at once a part of the city yet a world apart.

— Noah Devereaux

March 2, 2011

Greg Jones

www.GEJones.net

My body of work, Rochester, began as an exploration of street photography in the digital age. Building on the genre’s tradition and mantra of the “decisive moment,” as well as considering contemporary photographic practices that incorporate digital technology, these photographs could be considered “constructed moments.”

I photograph the landscapes and city scenes that surround me, and by compositing together multiple frames from the scenes I photograph, I create fictional narratives of the everyday. I often look towards mid-century street photography as well as pre-modern landscape painting to inform my own work.

Often when I’m out shooting I search for imagery that resembles common motifs in those types of pictures. I see it as a way of carrying on a type of conversation with artists of the past, the subject being the myth and mundane of the life that surrounds us, and the character of the environments we live in.

— Greg Jones

February 23, 2011

Martin Petersen

www.MartinPetersen.Info

I had been there the day before, but the workers were still doing their work on the construction site, so I just took a shot of a bulldozer and went home. Two days later the weekend had started and the construction site was empty so I went back.

There used to be a small field where this picture is taken. Next to it there used to be a small forest, and in the forest there used to be 15 houses. I don’t know how many pictures I have taken of these houses through the years, but it wasn’t until they were abandoned that I took a series that I was satisfied with.

It makes good sense when you look at my work. I prefer to find the emptiness in spaces, and with a new road being build it was probably my last chance to photograph there.

— Martin Petersen

February 16, 2011

Peter Hoffman

www.PeterHoffmanPhoto.com

The suburbia that I live in tends to be a homogenized landscape. The inhabitants of my town, and towns like mine, often drive past a plethora of diverse environments masked by the unassuming architecture that sprawls across the space we occupy.

With the intent of simply visiting new places and trying to understand a bit more about the diversity that surrounds me, I set out to document the spaces that various religious institutions occupied, and observe the physical impact of spirituality in the landscape.

Some spaces were as small as a storefront in a strip mall and others had their own large swaths of land complete with campuses and never-ending parking lots. During the project (which I often think about picking back up) I also attended services and spoke to the leaders of the different institutions. While this is not by any means an exhaustive method of spiritual pursuit, I came to a personal conclusion that many of these institutions, taken at face value, were pursuing unique ways of what appeared to be mostly similar ideals. The pursuit of these ideals just manifest themselves through a variety of arrangements and environments.

This image is from what is one of the largest non-denominational Christian congregations in the area, Calvary Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois.

— Peter Hoffman

February 12, 2011

Brad Temkin

www.BradTemkin.com

I began a project titled Rooftop, photographing green roofs and rooftop gardens as part of my ongoing visual investigation of the human relationship to the environment and contemporary landscape.

By exploring cities and documenting green roofs and rooftop gardens, I am highlighting the ingenuity of these additions to architecture and the landscape, and showing their relationships and tension to the skylines they occupy.

These gardens are largely invisible and inaccessible to the general public and therefore not meant to be lived in or enjoyed up close. Instead, their purpose is to create a path to a more secure environmental future.

Rooftop addresses what we are doing to correct our folly and make up for our relentless need to expand. In this extended project, I am building a compendium of photographs that will show the significance and positive effects of green roofs and rooftop gardens while revealing their function and visual sanctuary.

— Brad Temkin

February 9, 2011

Ben Huff

www.HuffPhoto.com

Completed in 1974, Alaska’s Dalton Highway (known locally as the haul road) is the northernmost road in America. At 414 miles, the predominately dirt road follows the upper half of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, and is maintained exclusively as the transportation route for the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. The road was opened to the public in 1994.

I began running the road in the Fall of 2007. Always North or South — advancing or retreating. The road is in my blood. The hum of my tires in my ears. Those I meet on the road are mostly searching for something. Some know what they search for, while others hope the answers will come from the landscape.

My own search begins, and ends, with the road — a dirt scar, cut through an impossible landscape. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

This is the ‘last frontier’, yet here we are.

— Ben Huff

February 5, 2011

Alessandro Imbriaco

www.AlessandroImbriaco.com

Rome is living in a particularly critical period in dealing with new immigrants coming to the city in search of a job and a new life. One of the most visible elements of this crisis is the increasing number of illegal urban settlements.

This photo series is a small collection of these temporary and precarious “accommodations” developing both in the suburbs and in the city center. In those place, where asphalt leaves the space to nature, new immigrants (coming especially from East Europe and North Africa) can find a shelter.

The attempt of my work is to map these places, not with the intention of social denunciation or easy commiseration, but by trying to create a shared fantasy which belongs to all of us. The suggestion is the first idea we get of our world, if we think to children’s drawings, where fundamental things are condensed in a landscape with a tree, a little house and some people.

This basic landscape is what I am ideally trying to recreate in my pictures. Even if the house is just a mattress under a tree, or between two bushes, that place, at that moment, represents what we consider home: protection, habit, safety, the thin line between what is inside and what is outside.

— Alessandro Imbriaco

February 2, 2011

Andrew Phelps

www.Andrew-Phelps.com

An important part of my childhood in Arizona was the camping trips we would take. In America, especially in the west, one can simply put on a back-pack, walk into the wilderness, catch a fish, build a fire and sleep on the ground. A wilderness experience had much to do with adventure: being challenged, scared and unsettled.

Upon moving to Europe in the late 80‘s, I quickly realized that the wilderness in Europe has been filtered through centuries of history and tradition and that the camping culture is far from the unpredictable and direct exchange with nature as it was in my childhood. The world of the camper is one of comfort, predictability, and a desperate attempt at a home away from home; the wilderness is avoided at all costs.

While people may long for the simple, carefree life in the midst of nature, they evidently find it impossible to live easily without comfort, safety and cleanliness. It is the search for a “true, wilderness experience,” caught between the urge to be free and the need for security.

— Andrew Phelps

January 29, 2011

Andrew Borowiec

AndrewBorowiec.com

The New Heartland is a photographic investigation of Ohio’s landscape that reflects ongoing changes in American values, cultural attitudes, and economic conditions at the dawn of the 21st Century.

I began this body of work in response to the 2004 presidential election. Over the course of a long and depressing day working as a poll-watcher, I thought about the extent to which the Midwest had changed during the two decades that I had lived here. That election revealed deep divisions among America’s citizens that were not only manifest in choices made at the ballot box, but also visible in the landscape.

The rolling farmlands and idyllic small towns that used to define our heartland are rapidly giving way to vast developments of mini-mansions and shopping “villages” designed to evoke an imagined era of luxurious consumerism. At the same time, traditional regional characteristics are becoming effaced by a ubiquitous global culture of material consumption — in the new heartland you can buy a quick fix of trendy espresso even out among the cornfields.

— Andrew Borowiec

January 26, 2011May 12, 2011

Amanda Keller Konya

www.AmandaKellerKonya.com

Southern California native Amanda Keller Konya is dedicated to the investigation of the photographic medium, ideas about photography and the photographer him/herself. In addition to a constant and critical evaluation of photography and its continuing state of flux, she takes on the sociopolitical within her work, addressing issues such as toxicity, school closures, land use and public/private space.

The image “Art Objects” is from the larger body of work entitled Commute, wherein the landscape is explored via the automobile. The physical presence of both car and camera offers one a false sense of security. Windshield becomes viewfinder, allowing for contemplation during work commutes, mundane errand runs and the occasional road trip. The view reveals the seamless blending of the constructed landscape and the ease at which terrain is manipulated to accommodate, direct and survey the driver.

— Amanda Keller Konya