An International Archive
I continue to be fascinated by the magnificence of light and how it affects the complex shapes and colors of our human-made and natural world. I find the act of observing with persistent and intense attention to detail inspirational. This experience creates a state of mind, however temporal, that allows me to find hope and meaning in the physical beauty that is our external world. Through my photographs, I wish to share that simple pleasure with others.
— Don McKenna, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
www.MatthewArnoldPhotography.com
Topography Is Fate — North African Battlefields of WWII considers the varied landscapes of North Africa that the soldier of WWII was forced to endure. Thousands of miles from home, largely untraveled and ignorant of lands and peoples outside his home country, he was dropped onto the shores of what must have seemed to him a dangerous and alien environment — his understanding of the land limited to stereotype, myth and the relevant army field manual.
The approach is conceptual, with the photographs of the North African battlefields presented, similar to the New Topographic photographers of previous generations, in an almost anonymous and neutral tone of voice. The images are taken in daylight, without complexity and noise, portraying a peaceful quietness of the desert and grassland to allow viewers to fill in that negative space with their own visualization of the war.
— Matthew Arnold, New York City
I am interested in exploring the relationship between walking and photography. All Things Pass traces my walk along the hundreds of miles of canal towpath that connects the river Thames in London with my parent’s home in Birmingham.
When I got the news of my mother’s illness, a condition that left her unable to walk, I travelled back and forth on the train between London and Birmingham to visit her. I remember gazing out of the train window wondering what it would be like to make the journey on foot, along the canal I could see running alongside the train line. I decided that for once I would make the walk back home, into the house where I was born.
In the current light of my mother’s illness, I became caught up in thoughts about the ephemeral nature of places as I walked. The deteriorating factories of the city soon gave way to pastoral landscapes and I became aware of the fleeting nature of the world around me, as everything I happened upon came into view before disappearing behind me. I set out to make photographs of the places that lie beyond the view of the canal from my mother’s bedroom window. I also wanted to show how places deteriorate and succumb to decay, yet many recover, transform and eventually find a way to thrive again.
— Paul Walsh, Brighton, United Kingdom
Gloomy Glens
Within the width of Irish and Scottish spaces, it is possible to live the uncanny experience of a lack of temporality, provided you let yourself be pushed around by the surroundings. The boldness of some wild places only permits silence, matching the smell of rotten barley. There, time seems not to have flown for centuries, only the spirit of the Highlander lingers, and the Hermit may still be hiding in the darkness of his cave, watching over the nest in the palm of his hand. If you let the spooky landscapes guide you, you will wander in a pleasant alternation of density and emptiness of spaces. There arises a peculiar informality from the bitterness of the air and the peaceful contemplation of the forests and moors. The scenery is a gigantic and verdant gash, and this is through gaps that the sunlight shreds the clouds. A certain state of mind is required, and if you roam the valleys for a long time, your feet wet with dew and with a misty mind, you could easily figure out the psychological condition of an Earnshaw, a Linton or an Heathcliff.
— Charles Roux, Paris
www.LaurenRHowe.PhotoShelter.com
Two years ago, when the light was too bright to make landscape images, I pointed my camera down at an undistinguished area of the ground that captured my eye. It was not in any way a scenic area. It was small and it was somewhere easily overlooked, but to me it was a unique image that reflected my training as a painter and my love of the distinct qualities that a camera is able to record.
I have been making these images of the ground ever since, un-cropped and subject un-manipulated by me. I take them in disparate places: I find subjects in the flattened leaves of parking lots, in the tiny plants that live on beach mist, in the parched tilled cornfields near where I live in Rochester, NY. They are always taken looking down, always of small places, always to me abstract and evocative. These three are a selection from a group of images taken after days of torrential rain on the red clay in Georgia.
— Lauren R. Howe, Rochester, New York, USA
My interest in this series, About the Weather, developed naturally while photographing in Colorado and observing weather as an element that has repeatedly tested our ability to control the natural world around us. Our use and enjoyment can sometimes have unpredictable outcomes. I have fond memories of Florida summers watching storms under a veranda with my parents sipping cocktails. There were even hurricane parties. The themes of weather as recreation, how we like to play with and enjoy the elements – skiing, boating, swimming, surfing, and just watching — and photographing — can very quickly turn dangerous. There have been a number of times while being outside during various activities, whether hiking after dark or in a storm, or skiing when bad weather hits that I have felt that “what have I gotten myself into” feeling. It is the feeling of edging into something from which there is no return. After Hurricane Sandy I wandered the powerless streets of lower Manhattan and thought about how much we feel in power to control weather for our own use — perhaps it is more passive such as having waterfront properties or more aggressive activities such as snowmaking, surfing in storms. I see it as a power struggle between man and nature and nature ultimately wins with sometimes devastating consequences. I prefer to stay on the line of safety but am intrigued by that boundary and like to edge forward to take a closer look, where boundaries between enjoyment and danger are constantly shifting.
— Eileen Keator, Littleton, Colorado, USA
www.IacopoPasqui.it
www.LucaMarianaccio.it
What is that ‘invisible calamity’ that seems to damage some places around us?
Oblivium is a photographic project that tells about an area forgotten by people.
Analysing the concept of oblivion in its different philosophic, literary and psychological meanings, we tried to turn attention to the landscapes we met following the natural itinerary of the Majella, a great mountain of the Apennine of Abruzzo.
During the itinerary we bump into the so-called neglected places, landscapes characterised by a strong uneasiness and a neglected nature.
The time reference in the headline wants to strengthen the oblivion idea and, at the same time, set an exact date when those same places have begun to lose memory.
The signs found during the itinerary let us think that everything stopped on the 15th August 2012, as if a silent catastrophe had damaged those areas, blotting out every human and vital presence.
— Iacopo Pasqui & Luca Marianaccio, Pescara, Italy
The land breathes softly here. These spaces of the yesterday, of the not-quite-yet exist within the present moment, but are not of the present. These spaces along the edge of the city, the web of now and then and maybe lightly interlaced on the outskirts of the almost somewhere. Within the breath, be it an inhale or an exhale, there is always the whisper of a story that echoes and vibrates within my vision. Like opening a storybook to a random page and reading the first sentence that pops out without knowing anything else about the narrative unfolding across pages, so to me are the stories running through the outskirts, these possibility zones of cities. Sometimes I feel like I open the page to tired legs returning home after a long day’s work, at other times, to hands engrossed in the act of work, and every so often, the page opens and I gaze through the eyes of a child looking expectantly forward into future, still believing in the possibility of dreams. Wherever the page opens, it is these fragments of stories untold, these stories that whisper up from the landscape that impel me to stop and set up my camera with the aim of creating a photograph that allows the viewer’s mind to wander, to gaze, to muse and create his or her own story.
— Gail Goers, Rochester, New York, USA
www.AdamAndMartenePhotography.com
The series Urban Wilderness depicts areas of land within various European cities which have been left unused for a period of time, where subsequently nature has been left to its own devices. These spaces lie in an intermediate state as land is bought and sold, decisions are made and plans are drawn. In some cases these spaces have been left for so long they appear to have been forgotten.
Spaces such as these are mostly closed off from the general public and often in order to enter it is necessary to overcome physical obstacles such as walls or fences. These obstacles establish the fact that these spaces are not there for the public to enjoy. They are privately owned pieces of land bought for the purpose of private business development.
These temporary havens of nature which are surrounded by the built environment contrast starkly with the controlled form of nature that we experience within city parks and gardens. They serve as a reminder that nature is always waiting to reclaim space whenever the opportunity arises.
— Martene Rourke & Adam Heiss, Manchester, United Kingdom
Federal Limits is a walking survey of the 40+ mile border of Washington, DC, where I live. This border traverses swamps, cemeteries and some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country. The invisible line skirts the edges of the National Mall, the only place that a vast majority of visitors to the city will see. It passes quietly along the water, never quite letting the Capitol come into view, where so much of the nation’s perception of the city derives. Through these images I’m looking for help to piece out my own definition of the city.
— Stephen Voss, Washington, DC, USA
