WAITING FOR THE RETURN OF THE GIANTS

WAITING FOR THE RETURN OF THE GIANTS

BY MARTIN COLE

This work is the practice-based outcome of my ongoing PhD research. It consists of a series of photographs taken in the Historic City centre of Palermo between the years 2014- 2018.  I was interested in investigating through my photographic practice, the influence of a Baroque mode of thought expressed through architecture, and extended throughout an urban space. In particular, I was interested in the possibility that a “Baroque environment” in this specific location- now at the Edge of “fortress Europe” but once at the centre of a different world order that stretched into the Orient as much as the Occident, could contribute to different readings, or manifestations, of Modernity. I have been visiting Palermo since 1994, and one of the things that has consistently struck me about this ancient, beautiful, and troubled city, is its markedly different relationship to time compared to most other European cities. This relationship with time is reflected day to day, but also across historical time. It is not a linear teleological version of time, measuring out the steady and ineluctable advance of progress, but circular. It is full of strange reruns and co-existences where past and present mingle in the same space. It is a place dominated both by the figure of the ruin, central to Walter Benjamin’s conception of the Baroque, and of the labyrinth, a trope of 17century Baroque thinking indicating cultural anxiety, and uncertainty about the outcomes of human endeavour (analogous to the postmodernism of our own time). With this series of photographs, I have attempted to engage with these ideas. I have used something of the visual rhetoric of the Baroque through the use of Chiaroscuro, which is both a cultural construct and the result of a collision between nature and culture in this environment. the idea of the shadow and what lies behind it (dietrologlia) is a part of the Palermitan psyche; The writer David Williams in his essay on Palermo in the book Performing Cities, puts it this way- “a melancholic obsession with “what lies behind” (dietro); behind surface appearances, received “truths”, language, silence, history; behind cover-ups and walls of all kinds.” I have also used the juxtaposition of the interior/exterior the one folding into the other. The Baroque church interiors giving way to the street which is itself a type of interior.

More images of the project  click

About the author
Martin Cole studied theology at Exeter university, Documentary Photography at Newport school of Art and Design, BA in Photography at the West Surrey college of Art and Design and is presently finishing a PhD in Photography at Plymouth University under the supervision of professors Jem Southam and David Chandler.  His exhibitions include New contemporaries 96 at the Tate Liverpool.  Evident, New landscape Photography at the Photographers Gallery 1997 with Axel Hutte, James Welling, and Catherine Opie.  New British Photography Stadthaus Ulm Germany 1998.  Mediterranean, between utopia and Reality Photographers gallery 2004. Floral Portraits Print Room Photographers Gallery 2009. Offsite projects for the Photographers gallery at Liberty in Regent st and Coutts bank in the strand London 2009/2010. Publications include Wine Dark Sea, Photo works monograph 2003. His Work is held in the permanent collection of the V+A museum London. His current working in Palermo Sicily and lives in Brighton.

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TWISTED TALES: ROAD TO HOPE

TWISTED TALES - ROAD TO HOPE

BY MARKUS HENTTONEN

Markus Henttonen (b. 1976 Lahti, Finland) is interested in people and the urban environment and the physical and mental relationship between these. His atmospheric photographs of landscapes and people lay somewhere between the real and imaginary and there is always deeper layers and multiple storylines to be discovered. The images are at the same time precise yet beautifully poetic. The timeless feeling combined to the surroundings that stay anonymous emphasize the narrative nature of the works. However in Henttonen ́s works the stories are only subtle suggestions and the focus is on the feeling.

And there is always this tiny hint of melancholy underneath.

Markus Henttonen graduated from Turku Arts Academy in Finland in 2002 and photography has taken him to live and travel abroad from early on. In his works he has photographed the anonymous metropolis in the series Night Time Stories and Wall and the crowded holiday beaches in one his very first works To be on View. In his recent projects Henttonen has shifted deeper into emotions and narratives, with the eerie and dark Silent Night and the newest Twisted Tales –Road to Hope a journey through landscape, time, and emotions.

Henttonen ́s works have been exhibited extensively in solo- and group exhibitions as well as international biennials, photo festivals and art fairs. He has released two books, Paral-lel City (2004) and Lonely but not Alone (2011) in Finland and the third one Twisted Tales –Road to Hope will be released worldwide in September 2015 via Hatje Cantz. Markus Henttonen ́s works can be found in several public collections such as the Italian Museum Su Palatu as well as all the major museums in Finland including Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Wäinö Aaltonen Museum and Art Museums in Jyväskylä, Kotka and Lahti.

synopsis

The new series from Finnish photographer Markus Henttonen is a complex journey through landscape, time and emotions. Twisted Tales –Road to Hope consists of precise and yet beautifully poetic portraits, narrative actions and landscapes. This conscious randomness of the photographs create the feeling of a lifelong road trip taking forward through events, emotions and encounters. Twisted Tales strongly balances between the thin interface of real and imaginary. And everything seems so familiar yet there is something strange.

During his years in photography Markus Henttonen ́s style has grown recognizable with expression being simultaneously intense and delicate. As a visual storyteller he has shifted from documentary approach deeper into narratives. But the stories in his photographs are only suggestions and the focus is on emotions. It is like he is subtly guiding the viewer to feel and interpret. Henttonen ́s undertone of wistful melancholy is present throughout the series in the landscape and peoples ́ gestures but at the same time there is this distinct feeling of hope.

Twisted Tales is like life, a unique and exciting travel with joy and sadness of desire and despair combining the most personal with things common. Memories, dreams and reality mix up to profound layers. Despite the flashbacks from the past and the unexpected turns this journey is going forward. It almost feels like a puzzle that will never really be complete. There will always be something little out of place, a little bit twisted.

See more about this photographer here.

TURIA

TURIA

BY JUAN MARGOLLES

Turia (you cannot step into the same river twice)

Changes in the physiognomy of the rivers in Spain have been vertiginous over the last one hundred years, due to new industrial and demographic necessities, and favored by political interests, which have promoted architectural projects as a symbol of power and progress.

In the Turia river, some of these changes have been extraordinary and have converted the river, from its source to its mouth, into a protagonist and witness of the political models, economical changes, and social development, occurred in the contemporary history of the region.

Located in the east of the Iberian Peninsula, the Turia river springs in the mountain ranges and flows across a rural environment throughout towns and villages. Downstream, there are two big reservoirs-fetish construction that characterized Franco’s dictatorship. In the 60’s, the course of the Turia was diverted, leaving Valencia, the Turia’s capital, without its river.

Nowadays, a zoo, football pitches, an opera theater, and the biggest aquarium of Europe, join together without complexes over the former course crossing the city to end in La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, an architectural complex with futuristic aesthetics and pharaonic dimensions that completes the extraordinary metamorphosis of the landscape.

Because of its features, the Turia river becomes a space of reflection and summarizes, like no other, the idiosyncrasy of the nation, reflecting success, failures, dreams, complexities, miseries and richness. Here, the political power has determined the contemporary concept of progress and the river is presented not only as a metaphor but also as evidence of constant change; a strange condition that invites the people to assume a blurred past, a disconcerting present and an uncertain future.

About the author
Juan Margolles’s work explores cities as a reflection space that refers to the contemporary citizen and their relationship with the environment. His photographic projects analyze the presence of natural elements and the structured landscape around them. Working in series, Margolles explores how contemporary development determines the manner of inhabiting our surroundings, modifies social patterns and determines our relationship with nature.

His work has been exhibited at Museum of Illustration and Modernity MuVIM-Valencia (cat.), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (cat.) Novi Sad, Serbia (cat.), Museum of Fine Arts Faustino Jorge Bonadeo, Argentina (cat.), La Casa Encendida Madrid (cat.), Space of Creation (ECCO) Cádiz, Luis Adelantado Gallery Valencia, Haskoy Yun Iplik Fabrikasi Istanbul (cat.), Matèria Gallery Roma and Spazio Nea Naples.

His photographic projects have been awarded with the grant VEGAP 16 and Generación 2011-Caja Madrid. Full Contact Prize 16 and Art Photo Bcn 14. Margolles has been nominated for the best Photographic Book of the Year Phoroespaña 15, Plat(t)form 13-Winterthur Fotomuseum and selected for Call Young Artist 14 Luis Adelantado Gallery, for the Sovereign European Art Prize 2011 and the International Art Prize Obra Abierta 2011-Caja Extremadura and the National Youth Art Biennial Rep. Argentina.

He has participated in the International Art Festival Scan 16, Encontros da Imagem 15, Art Photo Bcn 14, Biennial Fotonoviembre 13 and Descubrimientos Photoespaña 12.

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TRAVEL TO 52º29´13´´N 13º25´28´´E

TRAVEL TO 52º29´13´´N 13º25´28´´E

BY ANTÓNIO LUCAS SOARES

António Lucas Soares was born and lives in Porto, Portugal. He is a free-lance photographer since the beginning of the 90's exploring photography as representation and narrative. In 2004 he received the portuguese FNAC first prize for NewTalents in Photography. He published recently the book “Landscape is a Point of view” (Afrontamento and Casa da Galeria pub). He lives virtually in myprivatelight in the skin of the man who wanted to be Bruce Chatwin and also does some unstaged photography in myprivatelight.tumblr.com.

Synopsis

Where is my position? At what hour I will arrive?

Maybe I am too busy with the coordinates and the places are passing at the speed of a distraction.

Moments that condense themselves. It’s like this to travel in the GPS era. POIs impose and control the discovery of unknown places.

These photographs document a round trip with no particular importance nor symbolism.Way and return in a train, between Berlin and Poznan. Non POIs are registered at an aleatory pace of a look in the GPS navigator. However, the return shows the essence of any voyage: the confrontation with the other.

Landscape is a common place as much in travel as in photography. The will to register moving landscapes is common to both the traveler and the photographer. These photographs come from the two. Here it is the path:

[way]

A - 52°15'37"N 15°13'11"E 123Km/h near Toporow 

B-52°19'55"N14°54'00"E060Km/hnearRzepin

C - 52°20'14"N 14°25'57"E 145Km/h near Frankfurt Oder

[]

D-52°29'13"N13°25'28"E000Km/hHermannplatz

[ret]

E-52°21'18"N14°11'35"E172Km/hnearBerkenbruck 

F - 52°20'39"N 14°41'33"E 134Km/h near Gajec 

G-52°16'38"N15°20'27"E101Km/hnearBucze

TIMOR NOS OLHOS

TIMOR: OLHOS NOS OLHOS

POR JOÃO PAULO COUTINHO

João Paulo Coutinho é fotojornalista desde 1990, trabalha e vive no Porto. No seu percurso decidiu trocar o curso de Direito pelo fotojornalismo. Trabalhou para tão diversas publicações como “Autosport”, “Gazeta dos Desportos”, ”O Golo”, “Tal & Qual”, “Diário de Notícias”, “Jornal de Notícias”, nos quais publicou reportagens sobre temas tão diversos como o Mundial de futebol, Timor e Macedónia, o cancro em Portugal, literatura, natureza, pobreza, moda, das catástofres às viagens.  Em 2011 expõe "Timor: olhos nos olhos" na galeria Colorfoto, integra o Colectivo Phos como uma forma de pensar a fotografia de uma forma coleciva e abrangente.

sinopse

Fotografado em 1999, na minha passagem por Timor, resulta de uma  interrogação interior e silenciosa que fui fazendo, a par  do meu trabalho para o jornal. Uma câmara com rolos a preto e branco num ombro, uma outra a cores para o jornal apontada para a notícia. Estava este país a viver os primeiros momentos de pacificação e independência, mas os dias eram ainda pesados, com paisagens e famílias desbastadas, Dili desfeita, e o esforço dos primeiros passos para a organização. Por momentos esquecia a notícia e fui fotografando mas com a inquietação que estes tempos me propunham, sem procurar um retrato profusamente antropológico ou social, mas sobretudo olhá-los nos olhos,  fotografados com a sua anuência e com a ingenuidade possível. Não queria o resultado de um retrato timorense, mas, antes, gente em circunstâncias particulares que vivia momentos únicos e irrepetíveis, no seu dia a dia, ficando  ao observador escrever a história de cada um.

SWELL

SWELL

POR JOÃO PAULO COUTINHO

João Paulo Coutinho é fotojornalista desde 1990, trabalha e vive no Porto. No seu percurso decidiu trocar o curso de Direito pelo fotojornalismo. Trabalhou para tão diversas publicações como “Autosport”, “Gazeta dos Desportos”, ”O Golo”, “Tal & Qual”, “Diário de Notícias”, “Jornal de Notícias”, nos quais publicou reportagens sobre temas tão diversos como o Mundial de futebol, Timor e Macedónia, o cancro em Portugal, literatura, natureza, pobreza, moda, das catástofres às viagens.  Em 2011 expõe "Timor: olhos nos olhos" na galeria Colorfoto, integra o Colectivo Phos como uma forma de pensar a fotografia de uma forma coleciva e abrangente.

sinopse

Fotografado em 1999, na minha passagem por Timor, resulta de uma  interrogação interior e silenciosa que fui fazendo, a par  do meu trabalho para o jornal. Uma câmara com rolos a preto e branco num ombro, uma outra a cores para o jornal apontada para a notícia. Estava este país a viver os primeiros momentos de pacificação e independência, mas os dias eram ainda pesados, com paisagens e famílias desbastadas, Dili desfeita, e o esforço dos primeiros passos para a organização. Por momentos esquecia a notícia e fui fotografando mas com a inquietação que estes tempos me propunham, sem procurar um retrato profusamente antropológico ou social, mas sobretudo olhá-los nos olhos,  fotografados com a sua anuência e com a ingenuidade possível. Não queria o resultado de um retrato timorense, mas, antes, gente em circunstâncias particulares que vivia momentos únicos e irrepetíveis, no seu dia a dia, ficando  ao observador escrever a história de cada um.

SOUTH KOREA

SOUTH KOREA

BY JORDANE PRESTROT

Jordane Prestrot is a French artist born in 1982. He is involved in photography, music and literature.

synopsis

I went to South Korea in April 2006, at the invitation of a friend originally from there. His family and friends from Seoul welcomed me warmly. Yet, my stay proved to be difficult.

The totalitarian regime of North Korea gets very bad press back home, but we talk a lot less about the socio-economic model that governs South Korea: a form of ultra-liberal frenzy that indeed allowed this part of the peninsula to extricate itself from the Third World and quickly match the living standards of Western countries; but where the individual, bending under the pace of work and social pressure, is to be alienated - perhaps to the same extent as their northern brother. Add to this frenzy the weight of the traditions, hierarchies and familial obligations to which one must submit gracefully. From the world of work to the privacy of the family, the individual seems to find no respite, save for drinking copious glasses of soju as an escape - and at the risk of ending the night seriously intoxicated and asleep on a sidewalk... Visually, it often results in overcrowded spaces, saturated colors, patterns and information. Incessant crowds, tireless. The stereotype of an anthill - and quite rightly so.

As a French photographer, under these conditions, I felt somewhat battered by this lifestyle, but also full of affection for the brave and friendly Korean people I had met. I was full of admiration for the vitality of this country, once pressed between the Chinese giant and the Japanese giant, and now squeezed between the ghost of a fratricidal war against the North and the real and domineering presence of US troops. I then looked for perspectives… to breathe.

Often the perspectives seemed to be complex or clogged, the breathing difficult, if not melancholic… Be it the Changdeok Palace with a visitor leaning down into a corner, as in reverence to ancestors ; tourists gathered at the Imjin-gak park near the North Korean border, surrounded by soldiers guarding the Freedom Bridge and the Freedom Bell, among other Orwellian festivities ; a pier on the East China Sea that the South Koreans, irritated, refer to as the Yellow Sea ; overloaded  Hankyoreh offices, the only opposition newspaper wishing the reunification of the two Koreas ; or a rainy and early return to Incheon Airport... However, I hope that these images do justice to the finesse and delicacy specific to Korea: with the potential to be a peaceful and refined country - unified, even.

editor's note

Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.

REFUGE DREAMGROVE

REFUGE DREAMGROVE

BY GEORGES SALAMEH

Georges Salameh is a Sicily based Greek-Lebanese visual storyteller. Born in Beirut on 1st February 1973. After film studies in Paris (1991-1995), he moved to Athens (1997-2005) where he made his first steps in photography & filmmaking. Since 2006 he lives and works from Palermo.

synopsis

"Refuge Dreamgrove" is a photographic series based on the notion of hospitality. "Your home will be the one where you would put your head to sleep and for a pillow one dreamgrove". These words were pronounced by a prostitute, hosting a scared 12 years old kid. He was one of thousands greek survivors from the "Asia Minor Catastroph" of 1922. To reach Lebanon, he walked barefoot from Smyrna in Turkey, for days, before losing the rest of his family on the road and seek refuge for 4 nights in a brothel in the port area of Beirut. For the rest of his life, this sentence and that city became his haven. That kid was my grandfather, the one I never met. I'm a Sicily based Greek-Lebanese visual storyteller.

Editor´s note

The presented project was selected from a spontaneous submission made by Georges Salameh. Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.

OUT WEST

OUT WEST

BY BEN MARCIN

Ben Marcin was born in Augsburg, Germany and raised in the United States. He lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Most of his photographic essays explore the idea of home and the passing of time. “Last House Standing” and, “The Camps”, have received wide press both nationally and abroad (The Paris Review, iGnant, La Repubblica, Slate, Wired Magazine). Ben’s photographs have been shown at a number of national galleries and venues including the Delaware Art Museum; The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA; The Center For Fine Art Photography in Ft. Collins, CO; The Corden | Potts Gallery in San Francisco and the Houston Center for Photography. “Last House Standing (And Other Stories)” was featured in a 2014 solo exhibit at the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, where he is currently represented. His work is also in several important collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art.

The prairie houses in "Out West" were originally built after the Civil War continuing into the early part of the 20th century. During this time, the development of the railroad across this vast expanse, along with a surprisingly decent climate, created something of a farming boom. This all ended with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, a calamity caused by an unfortunate combination of record droughts and improper farming techniques. The houses I photographed are the remnants of this period in history.

Unlike the row houses of Last House Standing, structures that were originally packed into very dense urban neighborhoods, the houses of Out West were built by people determined to seek a destiny in almost complete isolation. Despite their very different origins, both types of houses would eventually meet the same fate. While the prairie houses and their surrounding environment are remarkably austere, there is also present an almost otherworldly serenity that must have given hope to a landowner now long gone.

NÉBULEUSE

NÉBULEUSE

BY GUILLAUME AMAT

Guillaume Amat is a French photographer who is based in Paris. In 2005, he graduated from Art School, with top honors. In 2007 he joined Millennium Images Ltd., Signatures-photographies agency in 2008 and participate to collective project on the French Landscapes called “France(s)  Territoire Liquide”.

Guillaume Amat is dedicated to long-term projects which produce photographic narratives. His field of action is not limited to a single area, never ceasing to question photographic representation and the way to transfigure reality. Aiming to adapt the camera to the subject and the way in which to narrate a story by using different types of cameras, formats and sensible surfaces. With his images he build stories which navigate between documentary and poetry.

synopsis

In a muffled silence, the sea disappeared, as if vanished, leaving behind only ghosts of stone.
These Blockhaus, remains of World War II, slowly digested by the tides turned out to be threatening places of refuge in the middle of an unexplored desert.

A haunting wind is sweeping along the coast and wrapping distant figures. In the open sea, one could hear the muffled sound of a foghorn very much like the whispering rumbling of life. People seem to get lost in a scenery both quiet and threatening where one gets stifled by the immensity of the landscape.

The project called « Nébuleuse » (Nebula) is part of a reflection on the question of World War II heritage, the French coast and its conservation.
In the form of a photographic proposition, I tried to show how the hand of man and the hand of Nature can mix or be in conflict.

Editor's note

Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.

OUT WEST

OUT WEST

POR JOANA CASTELO

Joana Castelo nasceu em 1982 em Aveiro. Vive e trabalha no Porto, onde frequentou o Curso de Tecnologias da Comunicação Audiovisual e concluiu o Mestrado em Comunicação Audiovisual, Fotografia e Cinema Documental, em 2010, no IPP-ESMAE. Tem desenvolvido vários projectos de fotografia documental, nomeadamente sobre o Vietname. Conta com exposições no Museu da Imagem em Braga, KGaleria em Lisboa e Associação cultural Maus-Hábitos no Porto. Em 2012 participou na Residência Artistica da Fundação Robinson em Portalegre e foi um dos fotógrafos emergentes no Projecto Entre Margens - O Douro em Imagens. É professora de fotografia e cinema, fotógrafa freelancer e colaboradora na editora Lovers and Lollypops e no grupo de Fotografia documental ARCHIVO.

Sinopse

"Na cidade de Ho CHi Minh" é um diário fotográfico que reflete a relação entre uma ocidental, a sua família luso-vietnamita e a cidade de Ho Chi Minh. As imagens, íntimas e pessoais, resultam de onze anos de viagens regulares ao Vietname. As ruas de Ho Chi Minh são circuitos diários e habituais. Azul profundoSaltamos no vazio.Puros. Uma vez mais.Acompanhados pelas nossas armas de construção de universo. De mão dada, cada um com a sua música, cada um no seu caminho. Recriamos um outro que nos acompanha; às vezes calado, às vezes ouvinte, às vezes dialogante.Temos medo e fugimos; acreditamos que estamos no sítio certo e prosseguimos. O espaço é feito de camadas de tempos. Coexistentes.

Passados e presentes. Num mesmo plano construído em fragmentos, romanticamente destruído. Belo. O olhar atravessa a face do agora, construído através do rosto mutante do que foi, do que não foi e antevendo silenciosamente o que vai ser.Tens medo? De que me falas tu? Porque é que nos anestesiamos assim? O que é a beleza? Porque é que sentimos tanto?E conhecer um sítio, o que é? É querer voltar muitas vezes sem vontade de aprisionar, transcrevo para o caderno vermelho. E ver as imagens habitadas pelo vazio, com cheiros e palavras em eco, índices de um referente emocional. Autobiográfico, anónimo ou coletivo.

MEDITERRANEAN. THE CONTINUITY OF MAN

MEDITERRANEAN. THE CONTINUITY OF MAN

BY NICK HANNES

Nick Hannes (Belgium, 1974) graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, in 1997. After working as a freelance photojournalist for ten years, he decided to fully concentrate on self-initiated, long term documentary projects. He published 3 books: ‘Red Journey’ (2009, a documentary about transition in the former Soviet Union), ‘Tradities’ (2011, on traditions and party culture in Flanders), and ‘Mediterranean. The Continuity of Man’ (2014, a portrait the Mediterranean region). He is currently working on ‘The Expanding City ‘(worktitle), a project about urban transformation and consumerism in the United Arab Emirates. Since 2008 Hannes teaches documentary photography at KASK / The School of Arts in Ghent.

synopsis

 “The Pacific may have the most changeless ageless aspect of any ocean, but the Mediterranean Sea celebrates the continuity of man.” (quote by Ernle Bradford)

Rich in history and blessed with a pleasant climat, the Mediterranean is the most popular tourist destination in the world. Over 200 million tourists flock to the Mediterranean beaches every year, putting great pressure on its natural scenery. At the same time the Med functions as an unintentional castle-moat around Fortress Europe. Despite the danger, thousands of desperate immigrants from Africa and Asia continuously attempt to cross the water in shabby boats. From 2010 to 2014, I travelled the length and breadth of the Mediterranean shores, documenting various contemporary issues such as tourism, urbanization and migration in 20 different countries. While I was working on this project, the region continuously hit the headlines: crisis in Greece, the Arab Spring, boat refugees on Lampedusa, wars in Libya, Syria, and Gaza. ‘Mediterranean. The Continuity of Man’ is a caleidoscopic portrait of the region that is considered to be the cradle of civilisation. In my images I try to capture the paradoxes of this region and the spirit of the time. ‘Here, at this crossroads of space and time, where the ancient sea indifferently links or divides people; here, just like in Nick Hannes’ photos, people are coincidental passers-by in the unscrupulous, ever repeating spectacle that we call ‘History’.’ (quote by Michael De Cock).

MADEIRA

MADEIRA

BY TIAGO CASANOVA

“It is now 09:06 of november 9, 2011, and I am onboard the flight TP 1573 (…) The airplane begins to descend. Madeira is down there. From far we can understand the feeling that the fifteenth century discoverers had when they saw Madeira (= Wood) for the first time, and from there we can easily guess the origin of the name. An intense tropical vegetation fills and covers the island of green, but I cannot help but noticing the various urban clusters, scattered houses, roads and highways and the megalomaniac construction of the new airport. The constructed confronts the natural on a dual mode. Large scars are open, but the consummation of the act makes the built elements part of the landscape. This new landscape causes both fascination and disbelief and it is as beautiful as ugly. (…)”

(Excerpt from Travel Diary)

KAYA KWANGA

KAYA KWANGA

BY SIMONE ALMEIDA

Simone Almeida was born in Maputo, Mozambique and lived there until she was 18, then she moved to Oporto, Portugal. She was finalist of the competition "Jovens Criadores" in 2012, with her photographic project "Oblivious". At the moment, she is a photographer and cinematographer based in Porto.

synopsis

"Kaya Kwanga" translates into "My Home". To me, this is Maputo, the place where I grew up surrounded by so many familiar faces. This project is about going back home. Going back to a place that once had such a big impact on my life and that nowadays often feels so foreign to me. Time is a never-ending clockwork that often comes hand in hand with oblivion. As time goes by, slowly and unawarely, we begin to forget faces and places, as well as the the memory of the feelings we once held for them. I cannot accept this. Here I present to you a collection of thirteen carefully chosen photographs of my last trip home. A trip where I had the overwhelming need to photograph, to document all those places and people that once again surrounded me, so that I wouldn't forget them. So that the world wouldn't forget. Because they are too important to not be remembered. If I didn't photograph them, I would lose them. And I don't want that. I like to think that if we photograph the place we call home, it will stop belonging to just us, and it will become a part of everyone who looks at it. That way, we take something so personal and make it universal. This is my Home.

editor´s note

The presented project was selected from a spontaneous submission made by Simone Almeida. Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.

JOURNEY WITH NO ROUTE

JOURNEY WITH NO ROUTE

BY JOÃO PEDRO MARNOTO

"The great photographers have "magic"- a revealing word that comes from Steichen. I believe that “magical “ photographers" are documentarians only in the broadest sense of the word." 

Berence Abbot in Ensaios sobre Fografia: de Niépce a Krauss, Oganização de Alan Trachtenberg, Orfeu Negro, Lisboa, 2013, p. 202

 
"Journey with no route" is an impressive series coming from photographer João Pedro Marnoto addressing life´sfragility and the bipolarity of contemporary world. This visual narrative displays the many contradictions that plague human relationships and diverse territories in our current time, and does so in a particular way.

We are taken by the rich and complex images that make us somehow want to look at them again and again trying to capture life´s inigma: The expression of pain and terror of an ape, which arises as a metaphor for the sufferingthat man inflicts to himself and to other animals; the anonymity and loneliness of the crowd, which comes through the cut-out figures backlit and isolated buildings that compete to see who is the tallest between them: the caring and erotic view of a nude woman who reminds us a Renaissance venus; pollute natural environment, adulterated by industrial infrastructure and simultaneously appropriated by man in their leisure times; and Auge´s non-spacesor the large malls and urban spaces full of contradictory signs.

The author reveals through a set of images, which entail a great intuition, sensitivity and magic, the complexity thatattends to human existence and how economic logic, without hindrance or substantive regulation, is appropriating itself of the territory in an entropic way. A project of personal reflection, a set of meaningful memories that the author wanted to register by creating adocumentary narrative that, on one hand, allows as the author says "... to revive and recreate those memories.Where the purpose is the journey itself. As life. "On the other hand, it is a photographic series that does not limit itself as being just a record of a number of situations, people and places, but that deconstructs these places andlives by way of a very specific visual poetry of its own, and thus transcends what is specific and goes beyond life´s contingency.

Unmistakably, a very interesting photographic project that combines autobiographical and poetic elements, making a documentary series whose structure creates a musical sequence that incorporates a life and colour palette that transcends the frozen moment of each image. Thus, it meets contemporary photography with a different magic, without rejecting the decisive moment and taking as subjects humanity and difficult social conditions.

Pedro Leão Neto

HASHIMA (GUNKANJIMA)

HASHIMA (GUNKANJIMA)

BY SÉBASTIEN TIXIER

Born in 1980 in a small town in central France, Sebastien Tixier now lives and works in Paris.

Trained as an engineer, but fascinated by his father’s camera during his childhood, he finally became a self-taught independent photographer in 2007. His work ranges from staged studio photographs to landscapes and documentaries on globalisation and its impacts – culture, environment. His photographs have been awarded numerous prizes and been exhibited in festivals and galleries across Europe.

synopsis

The Japanese island of Hashima, also known as Gunkanjima (or “war vessel”) because of its shape, falls under the Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. Used for quarrying coal, the island experienced extremely dense urbanisation accompanied by the highest population density rate ever recorded worldwide at that time. When the coal mines closed in 1974, the island watched as its inhabitants suddenly departed, leaving it to abandon and desolation. Contrary to most deserted places, the island of Hashima bears no traces of human life following its brutal abandon. No graffiti or signs of destruction wreaked by Man exist: the Hashima of today has been shaped by the elements and the passage of time alone. Picking my way among the ruins, isolated in the middle of the ocean, and the fragments of the lives of men, women and children, one are struck by the island’s silence. A meditation about the impacts of industrial decisions on the lives of many.

editor's note

Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.

DOZEN OF BULLS

DOZEN OF BULLS

BY BERBER THEUNISSEN

Berber Theunissen (Netherlands, 1989) is graduated (Cum Laude) from the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam. For her graduation series ‘Vagabond’ she explored how one lives without a permanent home, and how it feels to wander between friends and family with few possesions. Berber chooses to capture those situations that she little grasp of. Through photography, she creates her own holdfast to view her own life more objectively. She has exhibited her work in several solo and in group exhibitions in the Netherlands, and has had work published in international magazines and websites. Works and lives in Amsterdam.

synopsis

After ‘Vagabond’ she created ‘Dozen of Bulls’ during a tour with her grandfather through Iceland. “Fall 2013 me and my granddad went to Iceland. Me 24, him 75, differentiated by 51 years of life-experience. While I was figuring out how to live my life and what choices to make. Granddad was looking back on the choices he made in life and the ‘growth’ between then and now. We had never been this close...” Berber’s work was selected by Foam as a part of the exhibition ‘Photo Town’ in Felix&Foam, as well being selected for the ‘New Dutch Photography Talent’ in Gup Gallery Amsterdam.

editor´s note

Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.

DOLOMITES - N46 36 47 E12 9 47

DOLOMITES - N46 36 47 E12 9 47

BY ANDREA ALESSIO

Andrea Alessio (Venice, 1966) lives and works between Treviso and Venice. He studied Literature and Cinema at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice and afterwards continued studying photography with authors like Italo Zannier, Paolo Costantini, Gabriele Basilico, Jessica Backhaus, Guido Guidi, Silvia Camporesi, Joakim Eskildsen, Machiel Botman, Marco Zanta, Todd Hido, Pino Musi, Mark Steinmetz, Jason Fulford, Lucas Foglia.

His work has been exhibited, among others, by the gallery Il Diaframma for its 25th anniversary, by the Contemporary Art Museum in Bergamo and the Science Museum in Milan and more recently by private galleries in New York, San Francisco, Milano, Venice, Philadelphia, ecc. Andrea Alessio owns and runs a photographic studio (www.varianti.it). After a pause in his artistic career, he restarted focusing on more personal work in 2011.

synopsis

"ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN"

I would like to introduce this new series of photos by Andrea Alessio dedicated to the Dolomites by appealing to axiom that photography is a philosophical practice. His exercise allows us competing critically with the exotic, or with what exists outside us. It is not only a technical ability, but also a thought instrument that we can apply to the reality and to our reflection training-ground. Consequently, the true discovery is not in the visible imagination we create, but in what it reveals to us of our mind.

The journey begun during the recent years by Andrea Alessio through his own “where”, coinciding approximately with that geographic region called Veneto, satisfies first of all this need to realize, to direct the mind in such a way to perceive better what is important for us. In this sense the journey is a re-birth path that can just start nearby, from what we do not see or we do not want to see anymore. In this sense, Andrea Alessio’s choice to start the re-discovery of his own ‘territory’ through the Christmas decorations and their unsuspectable shining a light in the dark of the most common places is brilliant. His patient night visions derive from this need to shine a light on his own experiences.

The following stages of this journey lead us from the Venetian plain with its factories and scattered houses, to the most solitary mountain landscapes, in which the relationship between solids and voids, between what is and what is not, is sharper and more marked in the photography, also for the use of black and white. In the infinite snows of Misurina, collected in the ‘Apollo 19’ album, in which Andrea Alessio sketches the features of a Martian space deceiving the reason by widening the borders; then in the ‘Vajont’, where he tries his “reconstruction”, by investigating not so much for the remains of the memory as the sensations before time, before that dramatic moment, October 9th, 1963, at 10.39 PM, sweeping away almost 2,000 people during the sleep.

The photographer reminds us for a moment, that the mountain, a symbol of union between sky and earth, does not always aid the awareness by the human being of his position in the universe.

Finally the Dolomites. The story highlights another basic element of the poetic view by Andrea Alessio. The distance or what I would call more philosophically the right measure. It becomes the interpretation necessary to open the project and to explain the relationship with the context. The author looks for an optimal scale to bring the mountain closer to its possible dimensions. Somehow, you perceive the desire to hide any reference from the observer. The message is clear: the mountain does not exist, just what we are able to grasp of it exists. Of course, the façade of the Dolomite peaks is hard, compact and impenetrable. This rock is so much that it seems to us that we may have it between the teeth and chew it. However, sooner or later, the details appear on the surface. A fir challenging the high altitude, a pole driven in the stone, a child climbing on his hands. Suddenly this uniform mass starts slowly to distinguish itself, to reveal its life, as if it were a projection of our same existence. As we gain confidence, it seems to us almost that we may own it. So, it can even happen that we joke by mistaking the face of one of these Dolomites for the profile of Garibaldi, Verdi or Karl Marx. This is of little importance. What is important is the effort taking us there. In all these works you breathe a great ground silence, necessary to think and to obtain suggestions from the inner whispers. It seems to me that Andrea Alessio has stopped to pursue the past. All his meetings with his “where” gives shape to a new personal interpretation. Light, space and time are words that the author makes vibrate to call the definition into question and to look for a meaning out of the pure objectivity. Now there is nothing we can do but wait for his descent from the mountain towards the sea.

Steve Bisson (Asolo, October 13, 2014)

CÁ ENTRE NÓS

CÁ ENTRE NÓS

BY JOSÉ SILVA PINTO

José Silva Pinto is an Angolan photographer with a scientific background, whose life leads him initially to work in various areas, but who, at some point, devoted himself entirely to his passion: photography.

A recognised author who has been published in the most prestigious institutional publications of its country, he already has several exhibitions, both in Angola and abroad. His curriculum lists various photography exhibitions, as "Olhares" held in 2003 at the Casino do Hotel Marinha, in Luanda;  “Deambulações" in 2004, at Bar Pub Desigual, in Luanda; "Meet the arts of Angola" in 2005, at the Embassy of Angola in Tokyo, Japan; " Dipanda forever" in 2006, in the collective exhibition of Luanda Triennale and the solo exhibition in Seoul , South Korea, in 2007, at the invitation of a representative office of Angola.

It is significant to refer his latest publication – Cá Entre Nós José Silva Pinto - a book describing all the journey of the photographer, from the province of Cabinda to Namibe, Cunene and Cuando - Cubango, showing the locations from north to south of Angola that José Silva Pinto travelled between 2005 and 2011.

The photographic work of Jose Silva Pinto gives us a perspective that differs considerably from the stereotyped imagery of Angola, thus helps to create a more comprehensive idea about this great country of the African continent. His images allow a deeper analysis about Angola since they communicate, through the different situations and spaces portrayed, “another look” and understanding, showing to us also the positive human aspects, which are common to all cultures and people.

Jose Silva Pinto wholehearted and single out viewpoint about his country, and the genuine way he captures emotions and moments of life, immediately conquer our interest. The documentary and personal nature of his work is the result of the ability of Jose Silva Pinto to relate authentically with Angola and its people, thus enabling him, as he says, to be more constructive and more participatory in his work, but at the same time to draw attention to the problems we all have a responsibility not to ignore.

This work will be shown over the coming months, simulating the sensation of travel and discovery, intended by the author.

1st stage: Discovering Cunene, Cuando-Cubango and Bié.

Written by Pedro Leão Neto

ANGOLA - STREET VIEWS

ANGOLA - STREET VIEWS

BY GRAEME WILLIAMS

My work is housed in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian (USA) and Duke University (USA), The South African National Gallery and The University of Cape Town.

I have staged solo exhibitions in Johannesburg, New York, London and Paris and have contributed to many combined exhibitions on contemporary South African photography; including the 2011 Figures and Fictions exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the 2014 Apartheid and After exhibition at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam.

During 2013 I was awarded the POPCAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography as well as the Ernest Cole Book Award.

URL
https://graemewilliams.co.za/

Synopsis

Google Street View has become one of the most utilized sources of visual information and documentation in current day life. A mechanical camera records views of our planet’s streets at random moments in time. The views are snapped as they happen, with no consideration, for instance, of aesthetics or historical significance. Furthermore, the presence or absence of people within the frame is irrelevant. Google Street View provides us with a largely non-subjective document of our global village.

Doug Richard in his 2012 book, A New American Picture, makes a powerful statement about economic disparities and the neglect of certain segments of American society. His careful selection of screen fragments from the constant stream of dispassionate street views, produced a stark view of the social contrasts within his country. Richard’s anti-decisive moments are especially poignant because of the knowledge that the original source of these images (the Google camera), is both mechanical and perfunctory. His brilliant selection, in contrast, is extremely personal and subjective – the combination a creative and powerful comment on image-making and the state of his nation.

Angola, a large country on the south-west coast of Africa, also has vast disparities in wealth, but in contrast to America the majority of the population live in a state of dire poverty. Google has only captured a few streets within the richest waterfront areas of Luanda, the capital city. The sprawling slums remain undocumented. The lack of street view coverage of particular areas of the world highlights the degree to which social and economic disparities occur on a global scale; the Google street view coverage is influenced by the potential number of online users.

This essay, Angola: Street Views explores one of the overlooked corners of the world. Employing the pared-down aesthetic of the automated street camera as well as chance juxtapositions captured in Rickard’s book, these drive-by snapshots provide inescapable facts and insights into the neglected lives of many Angolans. The photographs were taken from a moving vehicle, resulting in accidental associations of people, vehicles and landscapes. The unstructured approach and loose framing results in images that resemble Google street views, however they lack any online functionality. Rather, their bland appearance, devoid of any postcard-type aesthetic, serves to communicate and amplify the social and economic poverty that pervades the city.

Images’ captions:
Angola – Street Views