Category: Work I Like

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Denis Tarasov

www.DenisTarasov.com

For more than a century, Mare Island was a United States naval shipyard, located in California, USA.
I, a person born in the Soviet Union at the height of cold war, having appeared on the territory of a US naval base, felt like a spy.
In the James Bond movies and other similar films, Hollywood has created a gallery of grotesque Soviet spies. My series, The Spy’s Collection, is inspired by these mass-culture stereotypes. A military base in California is photographed from behind the corner, while I was hidden in a pipe, peeping through a torn mesh fence. The photographer’s eye becomes that of a spy stepping out of a cheap blockbuster — or that of a gamer playing computer shooters. 
All photos made on Mare Island are the views of a spy: from around the corner, from a shelter, from bushes, or through an aperture in a wall.

— Denis Tarasov, Ekaterinburg, Russia

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Aubrey R. Hays

www.AubreyHays.net

I was raised in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and a Navajo reservation in rural Arizona — a varied array of settings that have contributed to my aptitude for solo treks and a remote creative process. Through photographic documentation I examine the ways in which the figure relates to the natural world around it. In negotiating my own surroundings, a process of performance and endurance is defined.

This work came from a month-long residency in Siglufjördur, Iceland. By grappling with the uncomfortable, the disquiet, the cold and unknown, I lay gesture to an overwhelming need to overcome isolation within these rural spaces as well as within myself. This riff in a seemingly picturesque space is informed by a personal coalition of nature and its aptitude for interference.

Aubrey R. Hays, Brooklyn, NY, USA

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Rachel Wolfe

www.RachelWolfe.com

LIMINAL METANOIA

A study in the interest of using outward scenes to turn inward. Liminal refers to the threshold of a physiological or psychological response. Metanoia originates as a Greek word to describe a change of mind, more specifically to a profound, spiritual transformation. These works are a visual interpretation of the threshold of a transformation — the wild, untamed ether space within all things living especially in relation to nature and my own human nature.

The images are an attempt to visualize this internal place I find in myself and reflected in all living beings. Joining together in this threshold are great potentials for new ideologies of society, art and life.

— Rachel Wolfe, Johnsburg, Illinois

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Juan Margolles

www.JuanMargolles.com

Casinos is a small village 38 km from the city of Valencia, Spain. There, the typical handmade nougat and almonds have been marketed over decades on the main road which goes through the village. Probably no one went to Casinos, but all of us went through it.
Nowadays, there is a modern and secure road which bypasses the town and eases the access to planned industrial and residential areas. These images document the beginning of the urbanization process in one of these future industrial areas near Casinos.
This project reflects how changes in the landscape can influence the collective imagination by altering our memories.

— Juan Margolles, Valencia, Spain & Berlin, Germany

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Liese Ricketts

www.DeadPhoto.com

My father, now very, very old, near ancient, lives alone on his farm.
 
Thick, insistent vegetation shrouds the buildings around his house. Giant trees fall and are left to rest. Structures, once useful, slump and collapse, succumbing to a lush profusion.
 
A mourning dove coos behind me as I step on to his porch. She sounds three deep round notes, monotone prophecies. Implacable mosquitoes swarm in the dry August heat; frenzied, I swat to keep from being eaten.
 
My father greets me, smiling widely, and declares, “The robins have gone.” He has said that at this time all my life. Then he always says, “They were here yesterday and today they are all gone. They know when to go.”
 
I know he is right. I have inherited his keenness for subtle changes in our Midwestern seasons. That morning, as I stepped outside of my home, I had smelled a hint of something, a coolness, maybe a dryness, something different. Fall is coming, I thought.
 
In February near its end, over the phone, because wicked weather sometimes keeps us apart, he declares each year, “The back of winter is broken. Oh sure, we may get some storms and more snow, but the worst has passed.” I know that, too.
 
Today the robins, prophets of spring and fall, have gone. I see he has left a bowl of bones on the porch for the raccoons.
 
Death blooms wildly in a weedy chaos.

— Liese Ricketts, Chicago, Illinois, USA

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Trevor Powers

www.CargoCollective.com/TrevorPowers

These images come from a sincere, insatiable need to photograph. My work is a reaction to my explorations and experiences. This diaristic way of working is an attempt to understand the world in which I live, and share what I have learned and seen. Photography is my way of knowing. It’s my way to replace the fear of the unknown with curiosity.

— Trevor Powers, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

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Valeri Nistratov

www.ValeriNistratov.com

The idea of my project Documents of Nature is to create a series of photographs that reflect peculiarities of modern Russian landscape and nature transformations made by man. This idea then develops into visual reflections on a new era in the redivision of human habitat in Russia.  
 
Most of the photographs in this project I made while walking through large Russian territories around Moscow and other big cities. Working on this project I’ve studied my object by walking and reopened the place I live in, and therefore society and man.
 
In the Russian language there are no correct words for the notions of “landscape,” “landschaft,” and “paysage.” In Russian the closest meaning for them rests with the word “mestnost” (local area) in its poetical, philosophical and cultural meaning.
 
Looking at the modern Russian landscape I’m thinking about landscape that has been changed by man, land changes, and its gradual transformation into the absurdity of consuming boom. I’m also thinking about fragility and the purity of nature that is still preserved near huge trading centers and big cities.

— Valeri Nistratov, Moscow, Russia

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Eiffel Chong

www.EiffelChong.com

An article by Josie Appleton, titled Towards Human Species Consciousness, asked if a world shaped by humanity was necessarily a bad thing. She went on to suggest that a broadening of perspectives of our current relationship with nature is needed if we want to live in harmony with nature. To her, art would be able to provide the gravity of future possibilities to explore, both the euphoria and grandeur of acting consciously as a species, and the awesome sadness of messing up and losing.

These photographs document the existence of human actions and natural processes in ever-changing combinations. They were taken in a neglected empty space that exists between public and private land. It is a celebration of humanity as a producer of nature, that we are a part of nature, not apart from her. It is also an investigation into the sublime attraction we have for nature, an attraction that requires a nuanced understanding of our human relationship with nature and at the same time an understanding that the relationship is highly ironic in these turbulent times. These spaces also offer a constant reminder of the resilience of nature.

— Eiffel Chong, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Jennifer Colten

JenniferColten.com

These photographs explore questions of place. The unnamed environments exhibit clear detail and nonspecific location. The images point to particular things, yet no identifying information is gained and the unsettling sites at times bear likeness to a crime scene. These are not precise documents — the photographs are not exact records and do not describe particular locations. Instead these are places unnoticed and vulnerable. The visible marks and traces left behind could easily be erased, removing any certain history or evidence.

The clearest sense of orientation in a landscape’s depiction lies in the location of the horizon line. Here the horizons are often eliminated, rendering the viewer slightly off balance, searching for direction and clear footing.

This work searches for an articulation of place hovering at the margins of the urban landscape. Whether the occurrences at these locations were dramatic or banal, real or imagined, a remnant exists. The sites express an intentional unease, as a sense of displacement mirrors our current culture of insecurity and longing.

— Jennifer Colten, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

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Markus Altmann

www.Markus-Altmann.de

My series, titled High Desert Crossings, deals with the Mojave Desert. This region, referred to by locals as the “High Desert,” is marked by military use, mining and the aviation industry. In recent times, new housing developments have sprawled out here as well, beckoning brave commuters with the prospect of affordable homes beyond the periphery of the city.

I was interested in how this barren and remote space between the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and Las Vegas is being used. And I was fascinated by looking at the traces that history left on this place – from the treks of the early settlers to the birthplace of Spaceship One – and their potential to tell us about the social geography and the state of mind of today’s America.

I do not use a strict documentary approach. Many of my images are subjectively-charged descriptions of places and situations. They become a projection screen for various representations, from our collective visual memory, of the American West.

— Markus Altmann, Berlin, Germany