Anomie

 

ANOMIE

BY QUINTIN H. O’CONNELL


Anomie, the title of this series, refers to a concept rooted in Durkheimian sociology. It denotes a state characterized by weakened normative bonds between individuals and the broader community, leading to moral ambiguity and alienation.

Émile Durkheim's exploration of anomie in the context of suicide rates revealed a critical connection between social integration and normative regulation. Anomie represented a void where social norms conflicted with the internal motives of individuals, causing discontent and ennui. In fact, the modern world is plagued by unheard of rates of depression and suicide.

In this series, O’Connell focuses on his own anomic sentiments. Namely, the disconnect experienced as one embedded within a culture which normalizes behaviors that harm the global ecosystem and thwart personal growth and flourishing; a culture which privileges consumption over poise and meaning.

Yet, amidst the sense of anomie, the series aims to unravel a veiled beauty concealed within solitary and quiet moments. It contemplates the mysterious allure of nature, inviting viewers to reflect on a delicate harmony that still exists within the unsettling dissonance of our modern world.

Serving as both a visual and philosophical exploration, Anomie offers a pensive journey into the transformative power of photography as not only a means of escape, but also self-overcoming and valuation.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Quintin H. O’Connell developed the Anomie series in 2023 alongside his undergraduate studies at the University of Florida, where he obtained his BA in Sociology and Philosophy. Born in 1998, O’Connell is a budding American artist working in photography. His images attempt to reach into the complexities of the human condition, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the timeless human pursuit of a meaningful life.

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16 NOVES DE FOTOGRAFIAS

 

16 NOVES DE FOTOGRAFIAS

BY DINIS SANTOS

Dinis Santos completed his bachelor's degree in Painting at the Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto in 2007, and in 2012 he completed his master's degree in Contemporary Philosophy at the Universidade do Porto. He has developed his activity in photography and video since 2007. 


Synopsis

These images come from the way I work at my "digital lab”. During the processing of the “raw” files, from my digital camera, I’m always zooming the image to 100% at fullscreen to analyze the contrast, detail, texture… by doing this, a lot of times, I was surprised by the image that I would find. The computer screen -16x9 - does a frame on my picture and shows me a new image. I became fan of this moment of chance and I begun to be more conscious about it. Now every time I’m processing images I pay attention to the details and I use my screen as a viewfinder, when I find something that interests me I do a “print screen”. Even when I’m taking pictures sometimes I’m thinking about the re-framing that I’ll be able to do. These images, that I am showing you, are a small group of pictures that were born this way. Pictures that came from other images from different contexts and works - from my personal work or from my comercial work. These are frames that I find during my work as a photographer. The frame, 16x9, it’s the ratio of the present days. I like this idea and I like to be guided by the means of production and to explore them. It’s my screen that chooses my frame. Being aware of the technology and their processes it’s a way of looking the world.

Editor´s note

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

 

WE’VE BEEN FIGHTING OVER ROTTEN POTATOES

 

WE’VE BEEN FIGHTING OVER ROTTEN POTATOES

BY MARIA BEGASSE


Maria Begasse was born in Oporto in 1982. From early on she showed interest in the area of communication, having started her studies in a vocational school, in graphic arts. At university she embarked on a more dynamic field of comunication, in the area of audiovisuals, having complemented her studies with a master's degree in photography, in London. Since 2012 she has been a freelancer in photography focusing her eye mainly in architecture and interior photography and on live music photography. In addition to her commercial work, she produces conceptual work that balances between the abstract and the concrete. She has exhibited collectively and individually, both in England and Portugal. Won the Audience Award in the Black and White 2015 Festival, with the We’ve been fighting over rotten potatoes work.

synopsis

'We've been fighting over rotten potatoes' is a series of 11 pictures that at first sight recreate images of war, supported by the drama of black and white and the contrast of light/shadow, but actually they are referring to the manipulation and creation of illusion.

These images have as reference iconic photographs of the 20th century (for example, Joe Rosenthal’s picture - Raising the flag on Iwo Jima, 1945, WWII) that even today maintains a universality and timelessness that raises disturbing questions about human behavior, since the beginning of humanity until nowadays — the current crisis of values deeply interconnected with the financial crisis and with the European policies of austerity. This work is from 2013, a dramatic year in the Portuguese society and other European partners, in that human values are beginning to be strongly sidelined in favour of the exploitation of numbers.

Focusing on the interaction of little toy soldiers of make-believe games in a field of dirt in that old potatoes simulate hills and trees ravaged by fire, this series of images result in a game of light/shadow and perspective, which deludes the eye by mimicking a real battle field.

In the production of the photographed scenarios lies the key to the illusion that the title itself refers to — what seems important, inevitable, the only possible reality, has behind it other orchestrated motivations.


editor's note

Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light the work of emerging or young photographers.

 

WALKS

 

WALKS

BY MARTIN BRINK

Martin Brink (b. 1984) is a Swedish photographer and artist. He is equally excited by internet and screen output as by the physical print medium, which has lead him to make several of his projects available as pdfs and ebooks, create animations (initially just sent out in email newsletters), and to found the blog The Digital Photobook.

synopsis

The “Walks” photos are not about the path, although it might be visible.
Instead, the photos are a method of discovery, of getting out, keeping focus, staying productive and alert. I see the photos as documentations, not of places, but of the brief selected moments when I stop and see that a composition has formed in front of me.

editor's note

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

 

REGAINED PARADISE

 

REGAINED PARADISE

BY FRANKY VERDICKT


Franky Verdickt was born in Belgium in 1971. In 2007 he completed his masters from Luca School of Arts in Belgium with the project ‘Fantasma’. His personal works has been exhibited and awarded worldwide, in 2015 he won the Lensculture Exposure Award and was nominated for the Moscow International Foto Award (MIFA) for his series ‘The South Street Village’. In 2015 he published his second book ‘Nobody likes to be hindered by worldly troubles’. Franky Verdickt currently lives and works in Brussels.

synopsis

As most Europeans, I live in an place where everything which surrounds me has history. More and more I saw the emerging of places which looked the same. First, by asked myself the question how it is to create a place from nothing, creating a place with no precedent history, how is it possible to induce identity, as the place where we live derives greatly our identity. Secondly, we live in a world with an increasing world population where the need of new living places is evident and crucial. So, building these new places it creates economy and work. And therefore I became interested in who was building these places, the construction workers.

The more I continued my research the more it seemed that creating a places to live seems to go together with exploitation of the workers, fighting against hostile nature environments, colonizing living space of others, or simply making lots of money. It seems that the only way we can create a place to live is by employing larges companies who think for us on how we have to live. The choice on how we can live is reduced to the creativity and commercial interests of large companies. The freedom to decide for people how to live is very limited. The way we are living is dominated by market logics, by cost efficiency. In most of the construction sites the workers are not able to buy what they are building. In Egypt and in China the workers had to live on the construction site since no adequate lodging was made available for the workers. The best working conditions were in Brazil as the workers can organise themselves in unions. The workers in the West Bank live in a perverse situation, the working conditions are fairly good and the wages are way much higher then what they could earn in Palestine, but these Palestinian workers are building houses for Jewish settlements, which makes it a pervers situation, once the settlements are built, they are not allowed anymore to enter the new Jewish settlement, it becomes part of Israel and not Palestine.

In Regained Paradise I show the problematic relation we have in creating places to live. By choosing construction sites as a subject matter, I start at the beginning of a place, a point zero, the place where mostly nothing has been build on before, or were all traces have been removed. I traveled throughout the world and found lots of construction sites in the middle of nowhere, like as they were settlements.

During the three year of this project, I have been documenting construction sites in China, Egypt, Brazil and Israeli settlements in the West Bank. My photographs aim to have a better understanding on how and on which terms we are expanding this world we are creating for ourselves.

 

THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF A BRITISH NEW TOWN

 

THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF A BRITISH NEW TOWN

BY KERIM AYTAC

Kerim Aytac was born in Istanbul in 1979, and grew up in London whilst studying in a French school. Film was an obsession from an early age, and was the subject of his degree studies. Aytac soon found that photography began to offer more creative outlets, which led him to pursue an MA in Photography at Goldsmiths University. His practice is engaged with notions of absence, trace and the psychological and structural codes of the urban environment.
As well as writing about and curating photography exhibitions, Aytac has exhibited Internationally in several solo and group shows, and lives and works in London as a teacher of Film, Media and Photography.

synopsis

This is a project about British New Towns.
New Towns were mostly built, in stages, between the late forties and early sixties to create new urban centres, as well as to accommodate overspill from major conurbations. They are still being built today.
New Towns were designed for “Modern” living. New Towns are very honest about what it is to live “Modern”.
Drive, Shop, and Eat, Drink then Home.
This is a project about how when there is no other poetry, a space will create some itself. A new language emerges that resembles, ironically, the plans and data visualisations based upon which these towns were built.
The ‘Modernist’ impulse results in the abstract within its spaces as well as its art.
A town built based on a plan can come to resemble that plan in surprising ways, but only once the ‘newness’ has faded.

editor's note

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

 

THE MEAT WE EAT

 

THE MEAT WE EAT

BY ANKI GRØTHE


In minus 30 degrees everything is frozen and still. It's December and the sun will stay low and it's daily visit will be short.  In the distance I can hear a light pandering noise. It is about 4000 reindeer, hearded here to this particular place for the yearly slaughter. Half of the reindeer pack is to be killed. The other half set free roam the wide mountain range of southern Norway again.  After visiting the reindeer slaughter at Golsfjellet in Norway, I have learned something new. I have always had a strong relationship with nature growing up with a family that like to spend their freetime outdoors. This has made me believe we all need to be aware and do our best to take care of earth and all our resources. The reindeer is a wonderful animal and resource, and at this particular area they are hearded then killed in it's own habitat. They are lucky like that. Avoiding the stress that a long ride in a trailer have on the animal. Killing an animal is a brutal act, it is no way around that. I think it is interesting how some places today, kids or people in general have no thoughts on what they eat, how the animal lived, died or got to their plate. In Norway we have strict rules about animal welfare, but it is just as important to take a personal moral standpoint.   Witnessing this slaughter ritual has made me more selective and appreciative of the meat I eat.

More images of the project  click


About the author

Anki Grøthe lives in the mountain village Hemsedal, in Norway. She is educated in traditional photography at Strømmen High School, 2002. And in 2011 she finished Bilder Nordic school of Photography in Oslo. She specializes in lifestyle documentary photography, and is forever curious about mountain life, peoples various lifestyles and their relationship with nature and weather.    She participated in "The censored exhibition at the Copenhagen photo festival".  In 2012 she attended the world famous "Arno Minkkinen Spirit Level V" workshop. In 2014 she also had an exhibition at Grims Grenka Oslo. Her contribution in the trending book The Outsider, was published by Gestalten the same year. Her last accomplishment was the release of the book "Emma og usynligheten" in February 2016. A poetic documentary about the everyday life of a girl with epilepsy. She is also awarded  New and Emerging Photographer by PDN fall 2016.

website

 

STEMS

 

STEMS

BY CLÁUDIO REIS

Cláudio Reis was born in Vila do Conde, Portugal. He has an Architecture background, and since 2008 has been freelancer in illustration, digital visualization and photography. At the present moment he is finishing a Masters in Photography, at the Escola das Artes, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), Porto, Portugal.

His work has been distinguished and selected for several exhibitions and associated publications, more recently "Ancrages", Espace 6 Elzévir, Paris, 2013; and the First prize of the "Cityscopio International Photography Narrative Contest Cityscopio", 2013, with his series "Intermission", which had the city and the territory of Guimarães as main subject for a reflection on the impact and meaning of the event European Capital of Culture (CEC) 2012.

"Stems" acknowledges a society predominantly moved by visual stimulus, where every person is both an active photographer and a passive subject. As each minute passes by, pictures are taken, readily uploaded, tagged, shared, and forgotten. Conversely, this is not an innocent process. A mark has been made. In "Stems", each picture is found through a specific noun, verb or adjective. The images are then stripped down to their visual essence as to merge form, color and light, compressing the difference between surface and substance. Rooted in the language, yet visually nameless, they are no longer compelled to overtly simulate reality, perhaps blossoming into something completely unexpected. One never knows.

 

STATE OF MIND

 

STATE OF MIND

BY NUNO MOREIRA

Nuno Moreira is an independent visual artist working in the realm of graphic design, photography and collage. Born in 1982 (Lisbon), Nuno studied audiovisuals and multimedia communication but always worked as photographer, educator and designer, being most importantly a self-taught image-maker. Currently living in Tokyo and working independently since 2007 through his own studio NM DESIGN, which specializes in art direction for book covers, photography, music design and branding, his side projects include collage pieces under the banner of “Abrakadabra” and numerous series of photography projects/installations, such as the recent published book “State of Mind”.
As a multidisciplinary artist Nuno has exhibited solo and in group shows since 2006 in galleries around the world and his led by curiosity to experience different cultures and engage in stimulating new projects.

synopsys

"The intensity of a brief experience.
the feeling of being utterly suspended in time, beyond past and future
- this belongs to many, perhaps even to all sensations of beauty."
Peter Zumthor

"State of Mind" is a photographic series, and ultimately a book, about the individual quality of mysterious strangers.
The images were captured over a period of several years by Nuno Moreira traveling in countries such as Japan, Portugal, Hungary, Malaysia, Spain, South-Korea, Romania, Russia, Taiwan - and what emerged is a visual narrative on the poetic quality of individuality and what it means to be lost in thoughts.
The State of Mind series is about the “thinking moments” and the uncertain atmosphere surrounding the people and places encountered on the way.
The book was released as a limited edition of 500 copies and can be acquired online through the artist website or at selected bookstores around the world.

editor's note

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