ALNIS STAKLE: NOT EVEN SOMETHING
scopio aboveground: territory
A project explore interstices which located between meaningful urban areas of the city and themselves remain in the field of the insignificant and inessential.
Historically cities are divided into areas, and the identity of each area is characterised by some peculiar features. For instance, industrial areas, housing areas, central areas, banking areas, etc. Each of these has its own identity, and people choose to visit or avoid them with a specific purpose. These urban areas are joined by interstices which do not perform any significant functions in the urban environment, but just exist and thus, with their very senselessness, fill the emptiness between meaningful urban areas.
Even though these interstices cover small territories, they are always intended for traversing rather than staying. No one wishes to linger there, because they are an intermediate between home and work, between one living space and another, between you and me, etc. These spaces are located between the meaningful and the meaningful, and themselves remain in the field of the insignificant and inessential. These are the places where we feel no desire to be in just like that, because with their aura of insignificance they not only make us feel as outsiders, but even “push” us away.
Come nights, and these interstices transform into seemingly dangerous areas in the city – poorly lighted, with bad roads – places where one is not likely to encounter a police patrol but rather be accosted by a pack of stray dogs or stumble across a gang of youths from the nearest housing area. Oftentimes, police reports feature these places as criminal sites.
My intention was to explore these interstices. It was important for me that the photographs be taken on winter nights, because it is ostensibly the most unpleasant and dangerous time for being there. On occasions there was so little light at the moment of photographing that I had to literally feel my way around. Yet the photographs produce an effect of being taken at daytime. Before I started photographing, I had imagined the pictures would bear at least the slightest traces of the menacing and inhospitable essence of interstice. Yet I discovered that in the photographs the interstice cityscapes acquire the qualities characteristic for the romanticist tradition in landscape painting.
Technical notes
The Images captured with medium format analog camera, scanned and printed as archival pigment ink prints on rag paper 40 x 40”.
Contact
alnisstakle@yahoo.com