AN EMPTY VALLEY

 

AN EMPTY VALLEY

BY ETTORE MONI


Ettore Moni was born in Parma in 1967, where he attended the Institute D'Arte. Self-taught photographer, begins with a photograph of the scene in theater and then get to important collaborations, including Republic and Anna. At the beginning of the new millennium moves in to New York and worked as a fashion photographer.
After that, he returns to Italy, where he devoted himself to a 4 × 5, beginning a personal journey through photography documentation and landscape. Since 2014, he collaborates with IO Donna, Rum Magazine and many other international newspapers.
He published also on: c41 Magazine, Artwort Magazine, Fotografia Magazine, Domus, Intern Magazine, LensCratch, GBlog Gessato, Darwin Magazine, Formagramma Visual Arts WebZine, GUP Magazine, Pool Resources, Dodho Magazine, etc.
His last performance with the project “An Empty Valley” was hosted on the Festival of Photography in Reggio Emilia, in Castelnuovo Photography, and in galleries in Crema, Massa, Parma, etc.


synopsis

The rays of sunshine barely reach out to here, let alone the first pages of magazines and the flashes of photographers.
Forno is no place you would get to by chance. Better, you may get here by chance, but it's not by chance that you'd come back.
Here, all voids are filled. Filled with stories about courage – that of an abandoned valley and of those who still live here, among all its wounds, contradictions and natural limits.
On one side its tough nature hardly allows space for man-made constructions, yet on the other side it lets quarriers reach its very heart with their apparently unnatural lengthwise cuts, which in fact follow the geological patterns of marble layers.
The antagonist here, if there is one, is history, which is always so severe as a teacher: e.g. with an industrial revolution, whose – mainly negative – effects have affected the valley, and the massacre of about a hundred people.
This is why it is of little importance if Forno is barely reached by the rays of sunshine, because here I could actually arrive. And I came back.
After all, in Forno one could well imagine to be able to look at the sea from the 'Dolomites' or to walk on the austere lunar soil. One may also find a shepherd writing poetry, a quarrier with a university degree, or a sculptor considering his solitude an opportunity; and even meet a hunter who prefers using his legs for trekking to using his rifle for killing.

editor's note

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

 

ANONYMIZATION

 

ANONYMIZATION

BY ROBERT HARDING PITTMAN

All across the world a uniform, homogeneous model of development, inspired by Los Angeles style urban sprawl – consisting of massive freeways, parking lots, shopping malls and large¬¬-scale masterplanned communities with golf courses – is being stamped onto the earth’s topography. With this anonymous type of development come the destruction of the environment, and also a loss of culture and roots, as well as alienation. This globalized model of architecture does not respect or adapt itself to the natural or cultural environment onto which it is implanted. As we have seen in recent history, fervent overdevelopment has led to crises, not only financial, but also environmental and social, and some even say psychological. Robert Harding Pittman began working on ANONYMIZATION in L.A. well in the late 1990’s. Since then he has been traveling around the world photographing the spread of “L.A. style development” in Las Vegas, Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Dubai and South Korea. The world was in the midst of a construction boom when the project began and a decade later most cranes around the world had come to a screeching halt. The next booms and busts are once again underway and continue to be the subject of Pittman’s work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Harding Pittman grew up in Boston and Hamburg, the son of a German mother and American father. After taking his undergraduate and graduate degrees in environmental engineering (U.C. Berkeley), an area of concern that continues to inform his work, he received an M.F.A. in Photography and Film/Video at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). His main interest is how different cultures interact with the environment and how they manage “development”.  

Pittman’s traveling exhibition and photography book ANONYMIZATION (Kehrer Verlag) was nominated for the Prix Pictet and the German PhotoBook Award and has received wide media attention (Wall Street Journal, CNN, WIRED, Newsweek Japan, The Daily Beast, El País, ZDF, European Photography, Aesthetica Magazine, Domus, Eikon, LensCulture, etc.). The project has been exhibited internationally at festivals, galleries and other venues, including La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Houston FotoFest and continues to travel. His current photographic work in progress, The Bubble, is the sequel to ANONYMIZATION.  


His award winning documentaries address many of the same issues treated in his photographic work. The films show the environmental, human and cultural costs of the development of our lands and the extraction of energy resources.  

Pittman’s photographs and films are in public and private collections.

Website: https://www.roberthardingpittman.com

 

ANTROPIZACIÓN

 

ANTROPIZACIÓN

BY YLENIA ARCA


Ylenia Arca was born in Verona, Italy and after studying architecture in Venice and living for some time in Spain is now based in Oslo, Norway working as landscape architect.
Her photography work, as her profession, focuses mainly on architecture, urban spaces, natural and anthropized landscapes.
She has been published in several magazines and websites and exposed in collective exhibitions.


synopsis

This series wants to investigate the duality of Tenerife's landscape, the relationship between the natural landscape and what has slowly been anthropized.
The original landscape of the island, wild and unpolluted, has been increasingly subjected to human action, that has characterized, modified, torn it.
As a metastasis, the appropriation of land by humans has defaced the island from its extremities towards the inland.
The heart of the island keeps intact and untouched its nature and its landscape, which only the power of the volcano could change. By contrast, the perimeter, the edge with the ocean, is a built and cemented border.
The man has made new, dual and ambiguous landscapes: buildings emerging vertically above the sea emulating the cliffs, concrete pools like small pieces of sky and ocean ... anthropic landscape is the doubling of natural landscape.

The series has been displayed at the International Biennial of Photography of Tenerife, Fotonoviembre 2011.

 

1,864 KM

 

1,864 KM

BY JAMIE HLADKY


Originally from Manchester, UK, I've lived and worked in London and Singapore, and been lucky enough to travel fairly widely over time. Living and travelling away from home for so long means developing a new set of visual understandings, and I've tried to do this through exploration and photography.
I prefer to experience travel at a human pace, and so I walk and drive a lot. Once, I rode the international rail network for 20,000 km, all the way from Singapore to Manchester, to make the journey without flying, and to see what's in between these two sometime homes.
I'm now based in Canberra, Australia, spending my time trying to see as much of this huge strange country as possible.


synopsis

These photos were taken during road trips and walks through many of the small towns located between Canberra and the Orana and Riverina regions of New South Wales, throughout September 2013.
These towns are dusty, hot, and so quiet as to be almost silent. In many places, the streets are deserted and buildings abandoned. After living in large cities all of my life it always amazes me that you can wander in and out of an entire town without encountering another soul.
1,864 km was the distance covered by my trusty Mitsubishi Magna that month.

 

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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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

 

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.