Steve Veilleux is a photographer currently residing in Contrecoeur, a small town near the countryside in Quebec.
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“Projet en cours” is a new project on which I’ve been working for more than a year now. The title, which is in French, is temporary and it literally means “Ongoing project”. With this project, I’m exploring the countryside of the Quebec province, questioning myself about how we transform the landscape and also about how we perceive it through the photographic medium. I’m interested in sites that show visible signs of its inhabitants or of its land owners.
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It can be very tiny signs like a birdhouse in a tree or bigger elements like dunes that look like a mohawk. But what interests me in these subjects is trying to create a sense of ambiguity toward our intepretation of them.
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I’m making some of them look like sculptures or artistic installations or even mises-en-scènes. Other times it’s just the uniform light or the unusual juxtaposition of elements in the composition that creates this sense of unreal.
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In the end, what I’m trying to do is to create a sort of distance in the way we read landscape photos, exploring the thin line that separates reality from fiction. I let the viewer see what he wants to see.
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Find more of Steve's work on his website.
“Projet en cours” is a new project on which I’ve been working for more than a year now. The title, which is in French, is temporary and it literally means “Ongoing project”. With this project, I’m exploring the countryside of the Quebec province, questioning myself about how we transform the landscape and also about how we perceive it through the photographic medium. I’m interested in sites that show visible signs of its inhabitants or of its land owners.
It can be very tiny signs like a birdhouse in a tree or bigger elements like dunes that look like a mohawk. But what interests me in these subjects is trying to create a sense of ambiguity toward our intepretation of them.
I’m making some of them look like sculptures or artistic installations or even mises-en-scènes. Other times it’s just the uniform light or the unusual juxtaposition of elements in the composition that creates this sense of unreal.
In the end, what I’m trying to do is to create a sort of distance in the way we read landscape photos, exploring the thin line that separates reality from fiction. I let the viewer see what he wants to see.
Find more of Steve's work on his website.
Can you talk about how you developed this focus on immigration?
The issue of immigration has always bothered me. It has been in my mind from the moment I started photographing in 2006, there was a massive wave of immigrants coming into Greece from Asia and Africa. It was interesting because this brought different cultures into Greece that were, back then, unfamiliar. This has become an important theme in my work because I try to show how the situation has changed from when I began to now, that is to say, much worse, and in Greece, these people come from countries that are very far from the philosophy of Europe. In the past decade, Athens has changed rapidly and it has been interesting, even necessary, to record this and explore how these two realities interact – the difficulties of the immigrant entering into a society that is clearly experiencing its own difficulties. I think about how people have walked here on foot, taking risks to find a better life, and then finding themselves trapped in a situation they did not expect to find themselves in.
It is around this trend of immigration that the project with Nikos Economopoulos emerged after ten months of discussions and workshops and looking at immigration in Athens. What also played a role was a curiosity I had to meet these people. The immigrants who have been coming to Greece in the last decade or so don’t want to stay here, but in these small spaces where they reside, they try to bring something from their past; a photo of their parents, something that reminds them of the places they have left behind. In Greece, the people who they live shoulder to shoulder with become their family as large numbers of people are usually living together in one space.
You have said that your experience of moving to Greece from Albania in 1991 has given you a closer perspective to the life of the migrant. How has this affected the way you capture your subjects, and how you interact with them?
As an immigrant from Albania I lived for many years on the margins of society as someone who existed illegitimately in this country. I was eleven years old back then, and Greece did not keep records of its immigrants as it does now because it did not have experience of this kind of immigration. It was as if you were not in the country yet, even though you were physically present.
Even now after so long, sometimes it still feels as if you don’t belong anywhere: An immigrant who goes to a new country has a sort of rebirth in that they have to start from zero, often with nothing. Knowing that I'm an immigrant, too, I develop a friendship with those I photograph in that I am also considered one of them. This gives me a certain freedom as a photographer to enter into situations and move amongst the people I try to represent.
Your images portray a very difficult existence that is not always shown or dwelled upon in mainstream media. What is it like to work with people who have been directly affected not only by the EU's immigration policies -- the 2003 Dublin II Treaty, for example -- but also by geopolitical events in Africa and Asia that have driven so many people to seek refuge in Europe via Greece?
A lot of the time I try not to show the actual conditions, which are much worse than as they are portrayed because I also have a need to show these people as proud and beautiful, despite the tragedy and the hardship. The conditions are such that I want to bring my own eyes to transform what I see; it’s something like going against ugliness, which is always very easy to record in these areas and spaces where immigrants live. These people have gone through a lot and it is not always easy for you to believe that they have risked their lives to get here. It always affects me. For example, a majority of those from Afghanistan are minors and at first, I could not understand how a child of fourteen years of age could travel alone, across lands, in very dangerous circumstances, all the way to Greece.
Everyone has a story to tell, especially those who have been forced to migrate, and everyone has a reason for leaving their home. Arriving in Greece, however, they soon realize this is not the Europe they imagined. The reality for them is much worse than fiction.
How have you seen Greece change through your focus on immigration?
Greece has changed a lot. In the beginning, it changed for the better, until and shortly after the Olympic Games in 2004, and then things started to change. The immigrants were one of the first sections of society hit by the crisis and remain one of the hardest affected: vulnerable and trapped because it is not easy to leave the country, so they are somewhat locked into a very difficult situation. On the other hand, they have also paid a lot of money to come to Greece, and have to find a way to return, which is also tough. Now things are even more difficult and there are no detention centers or places for people to learn the Greek language and become part in society.
In Greece as there is no work, they do not get medical help and are often left looking for food in the garbage. They are trapped by the fact that they cannot get their asylum application processed, caught in some kind of limbo, or they simply don’t have the money to continue their journey. And even though the European Union has since provided funding for people to return to their countries, this doesn’t fix the situation – everyday more people come to take their place and the cycle begins again. Since 2011, I have noticed that more people have been coming into the country in comparison to the years before that.
You have said you want to give immigrants dignity through your images. How is this important for you?
In working with these themes of migration, I try to keep a distance in order to see things more clearly. I try to show a different face, not of the hungry and suffering immigrant, though this is often the case, but instead to show dignity and hope. I want to show something different to what people have heard in the press, or to show a side to the situation that they were not aware of. I want to add with my subjective eye in these difficult circumstances, to beautify in my mind what I see, and to give that beautification to these people: to show them in a different light as they hold on to their dignity so as to have the strength to move forward in life.
If there is a universal quality to your work, which is rooted in very specific localities, what do you think such qualities are?
I think it is respect for people and between people, and the hidden beauty that everyone has inside of them, which can so often act as the light of optimism that makes a bad situation more bearable, more dignified, more human.
For more work by Enri Canaj, visit his website
Stephanie Bailey is an art writer based in London and Athens, where she has covered contemporary art extensively both as Art and Culture Editor for Insider Publications, regular art contributor for Odyssey, as well as contributor to Aesthetica, Art Papers, Art Forum online, LEAP and Yishu Journal for Contemporary Chinese Art.
Below is a selection of images from an ongoing project called "In Our Veins."
The interdependency between the American coal industry and its surrounding communities is deep and complex. While embracing the realities and myths surrounding coal production I reveal the socioeconomic impact on Appalachian communities that mine it. Pointing out the realities of a rural environment in constant transition, my work explores coal as a problematic, but longstanding, staple in Appalachian culture and economy.
Despite an awareness of the impact of coal, most know little about the lives of those who produce it and live with its effects. With profound compassion and respect I offer some insight into their world. I explore the evidence of an American ideological past and the nostalgia that exists within the way of life and traditions encompassing coal. An underlying connection exists to my subjects through the air we breathe and the resources we take from the land.
View more of Justin Kanep's work on his website
ARTBOOK was founded in 2008 by members of the internationally respected art book distributor, D.A.P.. They sells books by the world's most prominent museums and carry books of independent art, photography, architecture and design publishers. It is one of the most vibrant sources for cutting-edge contemporary art books on the East Coast.
"In June of this year ARTBOOK @ MoMA PS1 launched a satellite magazine shop within the museum, just inside the redesigned entrance. Curated by ARTBOOK @ MoMA PS1 founder Skúta Helgason, the ARTBOOK magazine shop represents the best of the current crop of international magazines in all genres – from intensely local food and fashion zines to sophisticated art, design, architecture, media, theory, and culture journals, to daily newspapers and major national magazines, spiced with serial artist's publications that gleefully defy categorization."
Find out more about ARTBOOK on their website.
The MoMA PS1, Long Island City NY, is one of the largest nonprofit contemporary art institutions in the United States. Founded in 1971, the MoMA PS1 is a unique museum that has hosts a wide variety of contemporary international art works, performance pieces, and site specific installation. The museum's tradition is to invite artists to transform the walls and spaces within the museum's unique classroom sized galleries.
Project Post Image Credit : Lara Favaretto
FLORIDIANS
After crossing over the bridge to Palm Beach Island, it may appear that one has entered into a fantasy world. Whether observing the homes, storefronts, or passerbys, it is obvious that almost everyone is single-mindedly striving for beauty.
Within this exclusive community, there is not a single area that hasn't been polished or manicured. After spending some time visiting my aunt who lives there, I came to realize the kind of subculture these people live in and the kind of disturbing “beauty” they strive for.
This is a sub-culture of wealth, health, and material happiness. These pictures strive to document this community its most raw form, leaving the viewer caught between laughter and discomfort.
See more of Gracie Jones work on her Website.
PUTPUT is a Swiss/Danish artist group established in 2011, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. They seek to occupy the space between input and output and work as a device to process information, persistently dedicated to unconventional visual experimentation centered around conceptual thinking. Standing up to the chaos of the world by means of form, guided by curiosity they choose not to believe in readymade sense and set out to capture the previously unseen by transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.
They are interested in reconfiguring, re-inventing and questioning the purpose and context of objects and situations associated with or part of everyday life. Referencing classic genres; generating a visual double take they interrogate objects and situations building bridges between idea, meaning, expression and artifact.
See more of PUTPUT at www.putput.dk
@PUTPUT
Traveling is a necessity. When away, I am overwhelmed by the inescapable loneliness of our condition. It is a sense of isolation that is hidden to us by our everyday lives – fortunately so. We grow accustomed to what our day-to-day existence throws our way, and it ceases to worry us: what is familiar needs not be perpetually questioned. Once what we are used to is no longer there, however, we develop a keen sense of things, an acuity we would never be able to achieve at home, for the structures of our ritualized existence would crumble and fall to pieces. Traveling is at once thrilling and scary. Discovery, exploration, the overwhelming of the senses. Loneliness, confinement within ourselves, the pointlessness of trying to find meaning. Along with the constant struggle – often in vain – not to succumb to the powerful appeal of what we find exotic.
We tend to consider unspoiled spaces, wild expanses of nature, as places from which civilization – and its resulting alienations – are absent. This does not necessarily mean we cannot achieve a true bond with nature, through which we might connect with the world in a direct – though unspeakable – way. But I do feel the manner in which we often spontaneously oppose “pure” to “altered” nature (colonized, enslaved, degraded; mostly negative judgments) conceals another problem: our relationship to nature may very well be a cultural habit, a mass practice, in total contradiction with our usual discourse. Perhaps it is our very depiction of landscapes that manufacture them, that create the scenery in which the subject – a child of his own culture – might attain the fantasy Eden that is a true connection to nature.
Matthieu has published Surfaces, Actes Sud, in 2009 and is about to publish Alpes (19/80 editions, 2012) and Sacré (idPure, 2012).
View Matthieu's complete portfolio on his website
Introduction by
The Editors
Essays by
Frank Young & Raoul Vaneigem
Featured Artists
Livia Corona, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, Louis Porter
Issue 4 presents the insurmountable reality of corporate and personal consumption. We are active participants, guilty of the very actions that we condemn. Familiar is the battle to which we so easily become party, weakened by illusions of temporary or moderate contentments. How does one consume responsibly? Is the cycle too powerful to disrupt? Are the fissures so deep that we’ve lost the ability to steer our way out?
8.25"x11", 44 pages, Perfect Bound
Printed In Iceland by Oddi Printing
Edition Size 500
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As a result of these changes, we can misinterpret or even lose all reference to the source: when the calculated representation is compared to its real counterpart, an arbitrary and disconnected relationship is created in which there is very little or no physical or visual connection resulting in questions of definition.
Take for example a three-dimensional rendering of a mountainside. While observing the rendering, it holds a similar form to what we see in nature but has no physical connection to reality– it is merely a file on a computer that has no mass and only holds likeness to a memory. When translating the rendering into binary code, we see just 1’s and 0’s – a file creating the representation from a language composed of only two elements that have no grounding in the natural world.
After all of these transformations, a new reality is created – one without an original referent, a copy with no absolute source. When observing these simulations and interpretations of our landscape within a single context or picture plane, ideas of accuracy, futility, and original experience arise.
Your most recent series AXIOM & SIMULATION, “examines the ways in which humans quantify and explore our surroundings by comparing artistic, scientific, and digital realism.” What first inspired this series and the idea of digital realism?
I have always been interested in the space where science and art meet, so I've known for a while that I wanted to try and mix the two realms in an abstract way and create a room where they can both interact. I became most interested in digital and scientific representation when I began to observe the ways in which we read our physical reality. The human species is constantly dissecting everything that surrounds us in order to gain a better understanding of what makes up our world. Through these studies the calculated observations and results often become skewed from what we see physically to the point of complete loss of reference: when looking at the two elements side by side, the real and the calculated, at first glance without in depth analysis they can appear as totally independent ideas with no connection whatsoever even though they are in fact the same things just described with two completely different languages. It is these parallel planes of existence that I became so interested in that inspired AXIOM & SIMULATION -- the ways in which we absorb information and transform that information back to describe the space or object that it originally came from -- the issue is that this description is never absolutely accurate.
You recently traveled to Skagaströnd, Iceland, for the Nes Artist Residency tell us about your trip and how you came about receiving the residency?
My time in Skagaströnd at the Nes Artist Residency was unlike anything I have ever experienced. Being able to work with a small group of artists in a remote village of 450 or so people in Iceland was really a unique opportunity. For the most part, I wanted to work in Iceland because of the landscape. When I started AXIOM & SIMULATION I was very much interested in the forest systems of the Catskill Mountain range which allowed me to make sharp concise and focused images that examined minutia and detail -- to balance this out I wanted to find an opposite sort of landscape, thus Iceland came to my mind. The vast open valleys and fjords of Iceland ended up being the perfect compliment of grandeur to the precise and complex nature of the deciduous forests of the Catskills. With that being said, after living and working in upstate New York, I was forced to re-examine my process of image making when presented with this sharp contrast of landscape. The work surprisingly did not come easy. I was making plenty of beautiful photographs -- its hard not to in Iceland -- but the nature of the drawings and overlays became a great challenge for me to overcome. All of a sudden I was presented with the most vast open spaces I had ever seen -- by working in such a drastically different environment I forced myself and my work to evolve, to figure out how this new space worked within the visual language that I had already begun to develop in the United States.
Who is your favorite living artist / photographer to date?
My favorite living photographer right now is Alison Davies. The way she renders the earths landscape as such an alien land ripe for exploration is truly inspiring. Not only for creating art and the mystery that is involved with the photographic document, but also the way in which we reflect upon our planet and our landscape. In a time where we think we know everything, we need a reminder that we know so little.
What is new or upcoming in your life? What are you currently reading?
Life has been a bit crazy lately. Directly after spending the month of August in Skagaströnd, I moved to Brooklyn, NY... talk about a severe difference. in addition to the move I am currently preparing for my second solo exhibition of my body of work Environmental Occupations, which is to be shown at Phoenix Gallery in the Chelsea gallery district of New York City. Overall though I am just trying to enjoy the people around me, relax, and make work. Currently I am reading There Is No Year by Blake Butler -- a fantastic non-linear narrative that II highly recommend if you are ready to take on a great puzzle.
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Mark currently resides in Brooklyn, New York where he creates his images and continues to study the fields of photography and contemporary art.
If you are in NYC during the coming weeks be sure to visit his solo exhibition at the Phoenix Gallery : 210 Eleventh Avenue Suite 902, Chelsea, New York, NY 10001.
Opening reception Oct 4th from 6PM – 8PM
Show runs from Oct 3 - Oct 27, 2012
To see more of his work, visit his website.
Interview by Taylor Curry
Taken primarily on medium format-color, Dan images the rust belt, a portion of America deeply hit with financial and economic crisis after the collapse of American auto and manufacturing industries nearly half a century ago. His photographs document the lingering glory of the American Dream. The spirit of the region remains, retaining it's individuality and vitality. We see the usual suspects: old cars. decaying buildings, curious looking folks and road kill as subject to his photographs. He approaches his subjects with keen sensibility. His portraits appear as sincere representations, accurate depictions of the people and experiences he encounters.
You can find more of Dan's work on his tumblr.
While others are busy rushing around with everyday monotony, Rutoed is ready with his camera. His poetic discoveries capture tragicomic events that help draw us back to a more beautiful world, "away from [our] thoroughly rationalized world."
"Due to the increasing pervasion of instant solutions into all areas of life, the world is sinking into monotony, people are becoming conformist. [He] does not observe this phenomenon with a repetitive series of photographs, rather he focuses on those moments in life that do not obey the standard rules. Because nothing is more boring than to picture boredom through boredom."
Keep an eye out for his new book!
"A new photo book by Robert Rutoed will be released in November 2012. The large-format, hardcover book will contain 50 color photographs from the past 5 years, the foreword is by renowned photographer, curator and writer Aline Smithson."
You can watch the trailer for "Right Time Right Place" on vimeo.
Find more of his work on his website here.
Richmond, California is a place where many families are struggling with rising unemployment, foreclosure, poverty, and the ensuing violence and substance abuse. This situation has accentuated Richmond’s reputation for being one of the roughest parts of the Bay Area. However, Richmond is also a place where turkeys walk past on the sidewalks, dogs guard their owner’s properties, people ride horses in the park, and fire hydrants cool the hot afternoons.
During one of my visits, a middle-aged African American woman asked me why I was taking pictures in her neighborhood. I answered that it was beautiful. She responded, “there is nothing beautiful around here.” Beauty and sorrow live side by side in Richmond. This body of work documents this contradiction, the character of the city and the pride of its residents.
His first monograph, There Is Nothing Beautiful Around Here, will be published by Owl & Tiger Books in October 2012.
View more of Paccarik Orue on his website.
Steven Brooks is a Washington based photographer who utilizes photography as means to explore his fascination with light and how we perceive its sources. He has harnessed an interest in our built and natural environments. More importantly, his work isolates how these spaces reflect back on us as individuals and relate to our social and economic realities.
"I see the scenes I photograph as sets, embedded with and awaiting human drama. Sometimes people appear in the frame but mostly just the clues they leave behind."
"Sometimes inspiration comes from unexpected places. In 2011, I had the pleasure of reading the book, “State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America”. Included in this collection of essays is one written by Carrie Brownstein on my home state of Washington. In that essay, Brownstein observes that Western Washingtonians often forget there is an eastern half of the state. She goes on to muse that the “Cascade Curtain”—the Cascade Mountain Range which divides the state into two distinct halves—is aptly nicknamed. Having spent all but one year of my life in Washington, mostly in the western half, her words rang very true for me, especially coming from a fellow west-side native. Even though I spent four years of my childhood in Eastern Washington and had driven over the mountains dozens of times as an adult, I realized that “Washington” to me had always meant the half I see every day."
"For those not familiar with the topography of my state, Western Washington is damp, green and dense, while Eastern Washington is arid, brown and sparse. As if to mirror the contrast in physical landscapes, the social, economic and political landscapes are also divergent. In Brownstein’s words, “Washington is two states.”
"A year or so after reading (and rereading) that essay, I found myself aching to escape an increasingly-stifling familiarity with my everyday surroundings. I desperately longed for new subject matter to photograph, a chance to shift gears and stretch out. One day, while dreaming of road trips through the American Southwest, but resigning myself to pondering nearby small towns lost in the folds of a tattered state map from my glovebox, I remembered that essay and realized that I had once again forgotten about Eastern Washington, a fact I was suddenly compelled to change. It really wasn’t all that far from my home in Seattle—at least not compared to the Southwest—nor did it require airfare, much advanced planning or a prohibitive block of time. I also surmised that it was full of the type of subject matter I had been longing to photograph: a rural and more quintessentially “American” America.
"A couple weeks later, I loaded my cameras into my car and headed east for the day. Within two hours of leaving the taillights and moss of Seattle behind, I was on the other side of the mountains, surrounded by rolling, brown hills, with dust kicking up from the roadside and parked pickups in the distance on every side of me. I decided then and there to embark on a series of two-day road trips, photographing this strangely exotic “new” state I had forgotten, or perhaps never realized, existed. What I’ve found so far is a wildly varied and beautiful terrain, a faded pallet of browns and grays, an abundance of space with telltale reminders that man owns and tames the land, yet the relentless beauty of nature prevails—the “America” I had forgotten was just next door.
"Most importantly, I have discovered that despite two opposites bound together by an outline on a map, there is a sense of balance driving across the state. “We” need “them” and just maybe they need us too. This series represents these revelations. These are the landscapes of Eastern Washington—as seen by a Western Washingtonian—from the roads that wind through it. This is “The Other Side”."
All photographs are untitled and taken in 2012.
For more examples of Steven's work, please visit his website and tumblr!
This selection of photographs is from her series Hungarian Standards. Central to this project is the notion of preconception. Her work examines groups that work in uniform, classical professions, marked with a particular style known to everyone. Her work alludes to our prejudgements respectively to gender and age.
In spite of her previous work (Cavalrymen and Equestrienes) in which members of the group motion a variety of gestures, each suggesting one characteristic description about the group, Hungarian Standards illustrates professions acting out the same position within their environments. Repetition illuminates the similarity of her subjects and defines the iconic interpretation of each profession. Subtle variations in individual body posture suggest separateness and remind us that groups consist of individuals who ultimately reinforce or rebut social preconceptions.
Fabricius has been exhibited in many countries across Europe in collaboration with curators such as Jovana Stokic, Roman Babjak or Grzegorz Piatek.
She has shown her work at Photoespana, ParisPhoto, Art Paris, Lodz Photofestival, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art – Rijeka, Kunsthalle and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest.
For more information please visit her website.
I was always commended by my teachers in grade school on being able to sit still and listen to the librarians read a book. It wasn’t so much the content of the storybook I was focused on, but how the person telling it, how they used exaggerated voices or facial expressions to convey a certain mood within the text. I thought you could tell a lot from a person by how much they dove into the story and how they thought it should be told. A bit of oneself lies within that story. This is an age where memories can be recorded and forgotten about as quickly as the late copper sunlight on a winter’s afternoon. It’s comforting to know that sitting and listening to one another stories about who they are or their native place, instills a long-standing, beautiful oral tradition.
But, often we can’t see the beauty in something until we look at it from a distance. When I lived in North Carolina, I couldn’t see the appeal or feel the draw of Southern culture. Since moving to Washington, DC, all these things that make the South what it is, seem slightly clearer. For me, the things that make up the South are the enduring qualities of history and vernacular storytelling. What I’ve discovered is that the South is not only a part of the country steeped in memory, but an atmosphere. I’m interested in how my own memories of growing up in North Carolina relate to how I see the present. I’m wondering where my own identity is poised as I figure out where my own memories and stories reside while experiencing them once removed through a camera lens.
Aaron Canipe is a recent graduate of the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. He helps operate Empty Stretch, a platform that promotes up-and-coming artists and publishes short-run photography zines and books. He has participated in exhibitions across the southern states and in Washington D.C. Aaron is currently in North Carolina focusing on his project Native Place.
Find more of his work here.
Originally from Germany, Alma Haser is currently based in London, UK. She received her photographic degree from Nottingham Trent University in 2010. She recently made the moved to London to establish herself as an artist / photographer. Her most recent series titled, Cosmic Surgery, combines the tangible photograph and the subject with the photograph itself. This facet of the images creates distinctive stages. Alma as the viewer of the subject, the origami construction, and then the reconstruction is then photographed thus creating a new aspect of the subject’s identity.
'Cosmic Surgery'
The series has three distinct stages. Firstly Alma photographs her sitter, then prints multiple images of the subjects face and folds them into a complicated origami modular construction, which then gets placed back onto the original face of the portrait. Finally the whole thing is re-photographed.
Origami is very meditative, you can get lost in the world of folding for hours. It is also extremely delicate and fragile, so by giving each geometric paper shape somewhere to sit within the final image, the origami has been given a backbone.
There is something quite alien about the manipulated faces, as if they belong to some futuristic next generation. In these portraits the children become uncanny, while their parents are seen in a more familiar moment.
With the simple act of folding an image Alma can transform each face and make a sort of flattened sculpture. By de-facing her models she has made their portraits into her own creations.
You can find more of Alma's work on her website.
The Threshold, 2012
Forest
This series of images about the forest began in a rather fanciful and serendipitous way: Knowing I had been conceived in Washington State, but never having travelled to the Pacific Northwest, I was recently struck by the compulsion to go to the place where I began life and the conviction that if I did, I would surely find something there. What I discovered, or re-discovered, was the forest, and within it a more imaginative mindset.
I grew up, like so many countless others, on the Brothers Grimm and various related fairy tales and myths. The forest plays a major role in the majority of these stories: as a place of enchantment, the landscape of an epic journey or the fulfillment of a quest, but also as the unknown, a dark and dangerous place outside the bounds of normal society where anything can happen, the battleground of good and evil. I am interested less in specific tales and more in the perceived mystery, magic, and danger of the forest, how these ideas have been constructed in our collective consciousness, and how they are reflected in contemporary reality.
My working method follows the structure of many of these stories: I go into the forest seeking adventure and the unknown. Small moments of magic and surprise, delight and fear, and chance encounters with strangers along the way inform my direction; my experiences in the forest become not myth or written tale, but the images in this body of work.
The Tree of Life, 2012
Satellite, 2012
Self-Portrait with Coat, 2012
Though I come from a photojournalistic training, I’ve always had serious misgivings about the politics of going into someone else’s territory and photographing, though I’ve done it quite a bit. The forest, to me, is an impartial province; it is both everybody’s forest and nobody’s forest. This makes it the perfect place for a photographic encounter, a neutral territory in which personal experience and the experience of others, the forest of today and the timeless forest, can intermingle without question.
Though these images are—for all intents and purposes—documentary, I seek in their amalgamation the transmission of something more metaphoric; an appeal to the imagination, a suggestion to the subconscious, a departure from the strictly realistic. Though my project is now based mainly in the Hoh and Quinalt rainforests of Washington State, I hope to expand it to include chapters in other forests.
The Parking Lot, 2012
The Woodsmen, 2012
Mosses, 2012
The Brothers, 2012
The Last Game, 2012
Dusk, 2012
Anna’s work has been exhibited internationally at galleries including ClampArt and the Aperture Foundation in NYC and the Musee de L’Elysee in Switzerland, and at festivals such as Recontres d’Arles, the Flash Forward Festival, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, and the Rencontres Internationales de la Photo de Fes. Her work is included in the book and exhibition: “reGeneration2: tomorrow’s photographer’s today;” she was selected as a 2009 participant in the Eddie Adams Workshop, and received the too much chocolate + Kodak film grant in 2010. Most recently, Anna was awarded the WIP-LTI/Lightside Materials Grant for 2012.
You can find more work here, on her website.
Most recently Daniel has been documenting change in developing countries and the displays of power that exist on the streets of these places.
There was much comment in Spring 2011 comparing the fall of communism to the Arab Spring. Many said we would see a domino effect spreading across the region.
The people waited. The media waited. The people with power waited. The domino effect did not come to Morocco.
Change did occur though, just not on the scale of Tahir Square. No tear gas, no grand trials, no displays of bodies in butcher shops. A new constitution was written and a referendum held. It was reported by Moroccan state media that 98.49% of people voted for the changes. An election was brought forward and a new government was formed.
A key difference in the new constitution was that the King choses the Prime Minister from the party that won the most votes. This may seem like small change, but it is one that was hailed as significant for a dynasty that has kept a tight rule since the 17th century.
Protest numbers in the capital have gone from tens of thousands, to thousands, to—on some more recent days—hundreds. A change has happened in Morocco, but it is not the one that we were told would happen. Some feel the monarch has brought change in, whilst others are still waiting.
Selected by Diane Smyth (British Journal of Photography), Stefanie Braun (Senior Curator, Photographers’ Gallery) and Francesca Sears (Director of Profile, Panos Pictures) as one of the Magenta Flash Forward Emerging Photographers of 2012.
Check out his website.
Your work combines three elements; collage, photographs and typography. When did you first begin using these elements in process and by whom where you first inspired?
I began using them at different times and didn't really figure out how to combine them until very, very recently. The way I began my practice was with collage, which led to poster design, which led to graphic design (I thought posters were the only thing that graphic design encompassed back then). That led to typography and later, photography. So that's the short way of describing how I use everything, but I don't know. It's a hard question to answer: I find myself approaching most things as if I were making a collage, seeing it as composite pieces that combine to make a bigger whole, that will then reveal something to me. I think they're all encoded in one another, for me.
I was lucky, throughout my time in Toronto, to have met a lot of people who were so committed to what they were doing that they strengthened my own commitment to my work, and made me realize that I could stand by it successfully. I was originally very inspired by the work of my friends, and that's what made me start taking art seriously: there was a summer where I spent every single day at my friends' studio, and seeing how they lived, and how their work was in everything they did, was really inspiring. I was always a big reader, and I made collages in high school, and before moving to Toronto I loved photography. But there was this long gestation period, where I didn't read, didn't make work, didn't take photographs, just sat in my room getting fat and smoking, that I started coming out of when I started hanging out with Team Macho. Them (there were five of them at the time), plus my friends Andrew Wilson and Nicholas Di Genova, showed me that you could live to your ideals successfully. So those were the people who first inspired me. But I didn't start using all of the things I knew, and began to work with again, relationally until I went back to school.
Tell me about your time at OCADU, why you chose to attend university there, your experiences, etc?
OCAD was amazing. I was just very, very lucky to have enrolled when I did, and interviewed by the people I was interviewed by: had everything not happened in a really specific way it would have been a terrible experience. But I was lucky enough to have my portfolio reviewed by two of the best teachers I've ever had—Lewis Nicholson and Jayson Zaleski—and they put in a request to have me skip the foundation year. This was really lucky because the people in my year were so inspiring and essential to my creative development. For whatever reason, the year I enrolled was the year that a larger-than-normal number of mature students also enrolled, so I was studying with people my own age (I was 25 when I began), all of whom, like me, had other degrees or who'd worked in different fields. So we were all very aware of how shitty it was not to be in school, and tried to make the most of our time. This manifested in spending almost every waking hour in the studio, and every hour outside of it with one another. I met some of my best friends through studying there, people who astounded me both with their kindness and with their intellect. I don't think I'd be where I am now had it not been for that school or those people. I could describe my entire creative career through the people who inspired me, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. The friends who I came up with in Toronto, and those I met at OCAD, made my life better.
I chose to attend OCAD because I'd been friends with several graduates of both the art and design programs, people I'd known since getting my first job in Toronto in 2002, who were either living off their art or living for it, and inspiring me constantly. I also knew that I wanted to go back to school but that I didn't want to move away from what I'd cultivated in Toronto, and my options were either York, Ryerson or OCAD. I'd done a degree at York originally, and the school and it's politics and the people who went there really messed me up and made me hate what I was studying (English Literature). I'd attempted to get into the journalism program at Ryerson but I'd heard that it was an incredibly competitive school, and at the time that wasn't something that appealed to me at all. So OCAD was it. I'm really glad of it, though, for the reasons mentioned above but also because going to OCAD was the first time I'd ever been forced to really think about what I was doing, and why. There were five or six teachers, including the ones mentioned above, that really made me question, day to day, what I really wanted and why I was doing certain things. It was because of going there that I got back into photography, and because I had someone as brutally hard to please as my thesis advisor that I discovered my love of portraiture. I feel like I'm still charged from the entire three-year experience. It changed me, made me care more and be more careful, it turned me into a workaholic and someone who can't be satisfied by anything, especially if it's something I produce. I can't imagine ever having gone somewhere else.
Fig. 1-99
Each piece in the Fig. 1-99 series has been made using the counterforms from a picture of a person. Or rather, from their portrait. Portraits shot on coloured backgrounds and used for magazine covers become abstract formal experiments intending to hint slightly at what’s missing in the image: the loss of the person, carefully taken out of context, as that context folds in on itself. In some it's more obvious: as many times as the counterforms are all straight lines and edges, there’s sometimes be a trace of hair, the outline of a hand, the curve of a back. The importance of people living in the work made obvious through their absence.
Where are you currently working in London?
Right now I'm freelancing. I actually just got offered a semi-permanent freelance position at a studio in Fitzrovia yesterday, so I'll be starting there in January. Up until the last week or so I'd been feeling as though coming to London was (financially) a mistake. I haven't had consistent work since I got here, and I've been struggling to find the energy to produce stuff. But I can feel that things are starting to change. Knock on wood, but I'm very hopeful.
Where will the future take you?
Who knows! At the beginning of November myself and four other people got a studio in Dalston, so I'm almost back to shooting portraits regularly, which is a relief. I've been working on a series of collages that are attempting to bridge the gap between the more figure-based stuff of the last few months with the abstraction I'd been working with before that. I'm trying to find a way to shoehorn my art practice into something more commercial, but still mine. I'm looking for someone to publish Fig. 1-99. I'm planning on doing a collage a day in 2013, and photographing as many people and places as I can. If I can find someone to give me money to do those things, my day'll be made. I don't know, for me the future always seems bright: I love making work, I love meeting people… whatever tomorrow brings is sure to be exciting.
You can view more of Anthony's work on his website.
Interview By Taylor Curry
Wet Hands in Salt Deposits, 2012
Deer Head By Homestead as Leaves Turn Up to Rain, 2011
Statement :
Aboriginal Australians used toas, typically made of wood and gypsum, as signposts to mark the direction of departure from a campsite so that others could follow. Here, I present images that document marks as a collection of clues, suggesting that place is itself temporally layered, a palimpsest of the multiple traces left by individuals and groups. These markers are sometimes literally embedded within the landscape, such as raccoon tracks in the earth and the evidence of human passage, or commemorate a natural event, including a boars passing and the death of an animal.
A Triassic Display; Crystal, Slate, Petrified Wood, 2012
Wild Boar Encounter, 2011
Fish in Iron Oxide Pool Seeping From a Desert Sea, 2012
Practice Walls, 2012
Autobiography and geography converge and each image indicates a location of personal experience while the 8x10 contact prints offer an intertextual investigation of the landscape. The traces, whether literal or transient, reveal the landscape as a repository of historical memory, of traces of a past and their complex connections to other places and peoples. Living in history means we cannot help but mark our journeys.
Palimpsest; Saguaro Cactus, 2012
American Bison Encounter, 2011
Leaving Camp, 7:55 am. 2012
Buffalo Gourds Over Pack Rat Nest; Noxious Weed, 2012
To view more of her work, please visit her website.
Highlight by Taylor Curry.