Work I Like – Page 15 – New Landscape Photography

January 26, 2017February 27, 2017

François-Xavier Gbré

Le voile / The veil, Avenue des Armées, Sotuba, Bamako, 2011

November 2011. Bamako “la coquette” is changing fast. The works in progress create the new image of the Malian capital. In the Sotuba area, near the “sino-malian friendship bridge,” Korean artisans build monuments over hundreds of meters, to commemorate the glory of the veterans. In this area looking as a war theatre, between construction and destruction, the sculptures made in the style of socialist-realist works from North Korea tell us a lot about the concerns of the state.

On January 20th, 2012, the Malian army celebrated its 50th anniversary and the officials inaugurated with great pomp the Avenue of the Army with the National Band playing and revived specially for the event. The Avenue of the Army is the symbol of a powerful military force, it is monumental and filled with signs of victory. A paradox at a time when Mali falls into one of its darkest periods in history.

Fifty years after the independence, African States strive to write their memory but chosen aesthetics are often foreign-inspired. Mali Militari is a fable that lets us imagine the dramatic situation that Mali knows, with an army unstructured, unable to cope with the jihadists who threaten the country’s political stability and much more.

— François-Xavier Gbré, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Paix et justice / Peace and justice, Avenue des Armées, Sotuba, Bamako, 2011

La fuite / The escape, Avenue des Armées, Sotuba, Bamako, 2011

January 19, 2017February 27, 2017

Steve Cordingley

SteveCordingleyPhotography.co.uk

Burntwood Quarry

For the past three years I’ve been documenting the reopening of a small sandstone quarry in Derbyshire, UK and on the edge of the Peak District National Park. The stone, known as Ashover Grit, is being used for conservation work on the nearby stately home, Chatsworth House. The quarry was last opened in the early 1900s and it is thought to be the source of much of the original stone used to construct Chatsworth House from 1687 onwards. The project to extract the stone is due to last until 2028 using low-impact, non-explosive quarrying techniques.

I’m using a variety of photographic equipment and formats, supplemented with sound, video and written evidence, to document the re-opening of the quarry until completion. I aim to self-publish a series of booklets throughout the project and exhibit a final sequence of work once the project is complete, subject to funding.

This selection of black & white film images are from January 2016.

— Steve Cordingley, Derbyshire, England

January 12, 2017February 27, 2017

Emmanuel Monzon

AdMonzon.500px.com

My work focuses primarily on the idea of urban sprawling and the urban expansion of its periphery. I photograph urban banality as though it were a romantic painting, trying only to be “stronger than this big nothing” in controlling the space by framing the subject. My aesthetic of the banal obeys its own rules: a ban on living objects, a precise geometrical organization, and the revelation of a specific physical and mental landscape blurring the lines between city and suburb, between suburb and countryside, a process that results in an independent identity.
This aesthetic of the emptiness in my photographic work attempts to understand our current environment.

— Emmanuel Monzon, Seattle, Washington, USA

January 5, 2017February 27, 2017

Hsiang-Lin Wang

HsiangLinWang.com

Metamorphosis

‘’Leave’’ is a representative word.

Things occurred, conversion is effected,

However, it is only a change in the form.

Still there, essentially.

Found the sense of security here which was lost for so many years in the past.

But lost my sense of belonging at the same time.

Nothing is forever.

Everything is permanent.

— Hsiang-Lin Wang, New York

December 29, 2016February 27, 2017

Gerrit Elshof

GerritElshof.de

I find the edgeland fascinating. I am fascinated by the suburban area around a town that is not really town any more but also is not considered as nature. In Europe there is no untouched nature to be found any more. But some areas give you the illusion of an untouched area especially when the photographer tries to let the traces of man outside the frame. In this way the edgeland is much more honest to me. You cannot ignore the man-altered landscape and the edgeland does not want to be a spectacular beauty. It is more a subtle beauty. You can find man-made structures here that can complete the fragments of nature to an exciting image with rhythm and structure.

With my bicycle I cycle around the inner city of Münster through suburbs and the city near landscape. With my camera I try to create another picture of my hometown not dominated by the popular sights and places of interest.

– Gerrit Elshof, Münster, Germany

December 22, 2016November 28, 2016

Vincent Bezuidenhout

VincentBezuidenhout.com

Third Nature consists of a series of images exploring a continued reflection on the constructed nature of the landscape, viewed in terms of contemporary spaces of recreation, commerce and suburban life.

The collective consequences of globalization, reflected in the contemporary sublime, and expressed as the terror we have created ourselves, forms the basis of this long term project.

— Vincent Bezuidenhout, Cape Town, South Africa

December 15, 2016November 28, 2016

Raoul Ries

RaoulRies.com

These photographs, from a series titled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, are inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s famous set of woodcuts of the same name.

Hokusai’s woodcuts are part of a genre called ukiyo-e, which means “images from a floating world.” They are clearly composed in different layers, letting Mount Fuji hover above or next to the world of humans.

Often civilisation intrudes graphically into Fuji’s sacred space. Trees or posts cut into the mountain’s silhouette, house roofs and other constructions imitate its triangular profile.

Hokusai’s prints share several elements with photographs: they represent fleeting moments while including indices of seasons, they create a memory of simple events and people’s relationship with time is a major subject in the images.

This series is about time, moments, seasons, years, lifetimes.

— Raoul Ries, London

December 8, 2016November 23, 2016

Robert Doyle

RobertDoylePhotography.virb.com

These images are from my project called Vistas — views from a few Superfund and brownfield sites in Western New York, not far from my home. These three images were made at the Albion MGP Superfund Site near the Erie Canal, in Albion, New York. They were taken on June 28, 2016.

Superfund – CERCLA is the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. Initially the fund was financed with a tax on the petroleum and chemical industries, but since 2001 funding has come from U.S. taxpayers.

I started this project because I wanted to get to know my neighborhood a little bit better.

— Robert Doyle, Perry, New York, USA

December 1, 2016November 8, 2016

Randal Barbera

BarberaLightworks.com

I have been a fine art photographer for most of my adult life. For me, camerawork is like a meditation. It is how I organize and understand reality. It is a moment of poetry, without the constraints of language. There is an instant when the barrier between the observed and the observer, between inside and outside, disappears. At that threshold, there is absolute continuity. If a day goes by without at least one such moment of clarity and coherence, I feel I have missed something essential to my wellbeing.

Those of us who create landscape images, as well as those who enjoy looking at them, are all burdened to an extent by the historical, cultural and aesthetic norms the genre has evolved since the beginning of photography. Our view of landscape is inextricably bound to notions of “frontier” and “wilderness” that obtain from the geological surveys of the West in the 19th century, as well as to the panoramic vistas of more modern conservationist practitioners such as Ansel Adams. Such imagery, though “true,” and indeed beautiful, does not really exist, and at which subjects very few of us have ever looked.

We are surrounded by landscapes, both natural and constructed. We tend to block out those aspects of our living landscape that are merely utilitarian or vacant. But I have been, and continue to be, interested in just such places and in the constructed landscape more generally. My field of activity is the western USA. I am compelled by the sweeping emptiness of the west, punctuated here and there by suburban expansion, as well as the remnants of failed efforts to colonize. There is at work a very personal element of memory at work. There is a sense of passing — of time, of identity, of meaning. I enjoy looking at the overlooked. I am inevitably drawn to the places that are manifestly not “picturesque” as these places resonate with memory and loss.

— Randal Barbera, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

November 24, 2016November 6, 2016

John Walz

JohnWalzPhoto.com

When I was younger, I worked overly-complicated projects. My thesis dealt with chaos theory and was criticized as being a mathematical Waiting for Godot. Now I look at simpler things. I am inspired by color field painters, and surrealists as much as landscape photos and paintings. I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping and my dreams and reality are still separate but by a lesser degree than they used to be. I only develop film about once a month and sometimes I see negatives I have only vague memories of shooting and there’s almost no difference between the memory of making the picture and a dream. To me it’s more about the feel of the shapes and the forms than what the actual content is. I think the pictures are uniquely Midwestern but that is by coincidence not intention. When I’m driving around the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio I see a lot of construction. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how but for me the construction sites have something to do with the sense of isolation of the suburbs, the idea that they are in a constant state of expansion is for me disheartening.

— John Walz, Toledo, Ohio