Ermo

ERMO

BY BRUNO SILVA

Muito tempo antes de saber o que Ermo significava, já lá brincava com amigos meus. Na verdade, achei que o Ermo só existia ali: naquelas duas ou três ruas cercadas por árvores. Ermo era o nome de um lugar nos arredores do porto muito próximo de onde vivi a minha infância e adolescência. Chegou a ser uma floresta extensa e densa até ao início dos anos 70. Altura em que o urbanismo transformou essa floresta extensa em dezenas de pequenos bosques. Foi nessa espécie de arquipélago de bosques que passei grande parte da minha infância. De dia, a luz: a aventura e a descoberta. De noite, a escuridão, o medo: o som dos animais, o cheiro a fumo das queimadas e a certeza dos fantasmas. Num desses bosques havia uma casa onde vivia uma mulher que tinha um problema de visão - os olhos dela eram brancos, mas não era cega. Ela vivia sozinha e quando lhe perguntavam como conseguia fazer a sua rotina sem qualquer ajuda, ela sorria e respondia que havia uma mão no ombro que a guiava através das árvores. Mas isso não a assustava - o que a assustava eram as árvores. Entre o documento e a representação, Ermo pretende ser um mapeamento sensorial de um território distante na memória. Abordando e rodeando questões entre o lar e a casa, o subúrbio e a infância, a forma e o símbolo, tentando criar um universo onírico, ambíguo e acima de tudo interpretativo. Tornando este “Ermo” que me é tão particular, no mais universal possível.

Artist statement

Bio

Utiliza a fotografia como veículo narrativo em projectos na área da fotografia documental tendo especial interesse pelo território e a memória. Apenas em 2017 começou a apresentar trabalhos publicamente. Nesse mesmo ano, recebeu a Bolsa Emergente Fotografia Documental I.P.C.I que lhe permitiu frequentar o Master em Fotografia Artística no I.P.C.I. Em 2020 fez parte da programação do Photo Alicante e foi selecionado para o Festival Circulations, Paris. Em 2021 foi um dos vencedores do Urbanautica Institute Awards. Em 2022 integrou o ciclo de exposições da Bienal de Arte Contemporânea de Cerveira e recebeu uma Menção Honrosa na Bienal de Fotografia de Vila Franca de Xira.

É representado pela Galeria Adorna, na cidade do Porto.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/o_bruno_silva/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
Website: https://cargocollective.com/brunoleitesilva

Bunker

bunker

BY Vincenzo Pagliuca

In the years leading up to the Second World War the whole Alpine area was involved in the building of a complex system of fortifications wanted by the fascist regime to protect the Italian border against the neighboring countries. A section of this defensive system, named Alpine Wall, was located in the valleys along the border with Austria where, with an incalculable waste of resources, the construction of about 350 bunkers was completed. A huge architectural heritage that remained unused and presided by the army until 1993, year in which the structures were finally decommissioned. At that time some of the bunkers were bought by private citizens and converted into agricultural deposits, others were demolished or abandoned for good. Despite the present state of oblivion these visionary structures, expression of the fear of loss and desire of control, continue to generate interest for their architectural characteristics, for the ingenious systems of camouflage and for the relationship they have established with the natural and social context in which they are situated. A difficult heritage worth preserving to keep the collective memory alive of a dramatic historical period marked by nationalistic ideology and by the inability to resolve conflicts through peaceful means.

Artist statement

Bio

Vincenzo Pagliuca was born in Italy in 1980. His photographic practice focuses on the landscape and man intervention on the land, especially bringing the attention to rural and suburban Italian locations.  His work has been featured in galleries, museums and festivals such as Copenhagen Photo Festival, Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie, Centro Italiano della Fotografia d’Autore (Bibbiena), Foto Forum (Bolzano), Galleria del Cembalo and Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome), Villa Pignatelli (Naples), Belfast Photo Festival. He published the photobooks “Napoli Nord • Case Rom” (The Velvet Cell, 2020) and “mónos” (Hartmann Books, 2022).

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_vincenzopagliuca_
Website: https://www.vincenzopagliuca.com

Unknown Exceptions

Unknown ExceptionS

BY Aleksei Kazantsev

Unknown exception is an unforeseen deviation in the program's operation, a system failure. For survival in the modern world, it is essential to have the assurance that it is orderly, explainable, and dependent on us. However, once we begin to doubt the familiar, to suspect the ordinary of being illusory, that suspicion never lets go. And then it turns out that reality persistently offers to play, and the everyday landscape holds phantom visions and unpredictable glitches. The process of creating the series "Unknown Exceptions" was akin to performing a ritual with an unforeseen outcome. The project began with repeated visits to the same place on the outskirts of the city, somewhere between a park and a forest. Completely deserted in the twilight, it felt like a dream ready to generate phantoms. To bring them out, I created artificial anomalies using my own body, simple materials, and light structures. Repeated, monotonous attempts to capture the same frame immersed me in a trance-like state. Gradually, I transformed into a shapeless figure wandering in almost complete darkness... These experiments allowed me to document the (im)possible, what the human eye cannot perceive, making technology a mediator between the real and the phantom, between the physiology of twilight vision and our fantasies.

Artist statement

Bio

Aleksei Kazantsev is a visual artist working in the medium of photography. Born in Belarus, lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Aleksei studied photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. His work intuitively and narratively stems from the visual heritage of archetypal images, as well as our collective unconscious memory, symbolism, hypnotic states, trance, liminal states of mind. The artist looks for a twist in reality. Using altered perspectives and distorted vision, he moves you to feel disorientation and to recognize the uncanny. Exhibited in various galleries across Europe: Belgium (L'Enfant Sauvage, Pulsar, LWM18, National 55, Archiraar Gallery, Liège Photobook Festival, L'image sans nom, PAK-Gistel, Psychiatric Center Sint-Amandus); UK (pic.london festival, The Minories Galleries); Poland (Arsenal Gallery, Fundacia Villa Sokrates, Gray Mandorla Studio).

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akapicdotcom
Website: http://www.akapic.com

Souvenirs from Home by Miguel Santos

SOUVENIRS FROM HOME

BY MIGUEL SANTOS

PT | EN

February 2020.

I moved to Italy to attend an internship at a design studio. 4 weeks in, the country goes into lockdown.

Exploring trips I had planned on taking around the country now come down to the odd trip to the kitchen, bathroom, and on unexpectedly rare and magical occasions—to venture out to the supermarket. Sightseeing has been redirected to a very specific enclosed area, unveiling new ways to perceive it. Trivialities of the outside world are on standby; new ones are found indoors, as a possible escape from the cataclysm looming over us.

I find myself taking notice of subtle changes in uneventful spaces. Light falls on everyday objects and its surroundings, unveiling parallels between the public and private domains. Domestic scenes look almost carefully orchestrated, where object becomes subject (to the changes in light). Outside, the neighbouring axis is repurposed—buildings’ shadows, with moving sharp angles, are now indicators of the time of the day (a bit like the sundials in the façades of the piazzi I visited before shit hit the fan).

I become more in sync with the physical changes around me. In the absence of outside stimuli, I learn to find them in the immediate space around me. Time leaves its mark on the mundane and ephemeral—food rots, water dries. A form of time regulation denoting a journey through the everyday. The human factor is replaced with the inanimate, yet these images tell a story of warmth, and make quarantine a nice and desirable destination.

These images are souvenirs of a trip I did not intend on taking, in which destination became the same as the point of departure.

Bio
Miguel Santos holds a degree in Communication Design from Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto. (2019) Participated in an exchange student programme at Willem de Kooning Academie (Rotterdam). He has an FdA in Interior Design from the London College of Communication (2009- 2011). Has interned at the faculty’s museum. Collaborated on a freelance level with creative and marketing studio Grow Creativity (Porto), in the design and production department. At the moment, he is interning at Studio Blanco in Italy, where he is involved in both commercial and cultural projects.

Hythloday by Norberto Fernández Soriano

Hythloday by Norberto Fernández Soriano

Hythloday is a body of work that draws from one community’s fight against fracking, and presents their experience and beliefs through a visual interpretation of what is positioned between fact and fiction. In the United Kingdom, the trial site for hydraulic fracture-fracking for shale gas – and its potential for national rollout and future commercial exploitation - is located in the countryside between the cities of Preston and Blackpool. A mile down the road from this site, a group of activists - known to the local community as ‘The Protectors’ - set up camp, where they lived and fought to stop this fracking trial.

In what might be described as a “photographic novella”, Hythloday transforms this physical place into an imagined post-fracking scenario, in which the activities, causes, fears, effects and thoughts situated in this place constitute a potential future landscape. Hythloday draws its titled from the name of the sailor in Thomas Moore’s Utopia, which is used as a means to explore and understand the place itself, as well as ‘The Protectors’ fight. Hythloday combines the characters and elements on the ground with the mood to create a journey through an unknown and strange place that reveals the tension between those protrayed and the land they inhabit.

Bio
Norberto Fernández Soriano (1988, Spain) is a visual storyteller and book-maker. He uses photography to explore and interpret the world he inhabits, creating a common ground between contemporary social issues and his own life questions.

Having previously studied Chemical Engineering, his scientific background and self-taught approach to photography has led him to investigate the narrative possibilities of the medium. He is currently studying for a Masters in Photography at University of West of England (UWE Bristol) - his work has materialised in the form of the artist-book, Hythloday, and will be exhibited at the Martin Parr Foundation in 2020.

www.norbertofernandezsoriano.com

Field by Jemima Yong

Field

BY JEMIMA YONG

_FIELD_ is a series of photographs of a single public green during the Covid-19 lockdown and made from my bedroom window. I began making the photographs as a way of creating in isolation. I continued as I wanted to chronicle how the public space was being shared, the physical impact of new social measures and the variety of activities that now take place outside.

Bio
Jemima Yong (b. 1990) is a Malaysian photographer and performancemaker, born in Singapore and currently residing in London. Experimentation, collaboration and time are central to her practice. Her recent work includes _Marathon_ with JAMS (Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award 2018): a performance about fiction, memory and the hysteria of crowds, and _ROOM_: an improvised storytelling experience that takes place in the imagination of the audience. She is a member of Documentation Action Research Collective and an associate of Forest Fringe.
www.jemimayong.format.com

Pandemic Preparation Techniques: 1- Quarantine by Sergio Camplone

Pandemic Preparation Techniques:
1- Quarantine

BY SERGIO CAMPLONE

Now more than ever, we are experiencing such a strong time dilation.Quarantine is difficult, but facts, places and characters of this story have helped me to reflect.I produced the first chapter of the CoVid 19 trilogy following one of the most divisive debates in this pandemic: How the coronavirus travels through the air?Suddenly, daily mundanities seem to demand a military strategy, forcing us to overthink things they never used to think about at all.Can you go outside? What if you’re walking downwind of another person? Is it irrational to hold your breath?Everything seems to be contaminated. Personal Protection Equipment, have become unobtainable luxury objects and so, viral tutorials on the self-production of PPE are spread on the network without considering that they have precise methods of use and disposal.WHO has released some good instructional videos about using PPE and on correct individual behavior. Moreover, the same quarantine, in its simplest form, is the creation of a hygienic border between two or more things, in order to protect both. In this spatial containment strategy, the work follows and conceptualizes some WHO tutorials on the correct use of Personal Protective Equipment.

Bio

He was born in Pescara, he studied photography at R. Bauer in Milan. He teaches photography in various institutions working on the perception and visual representation of new social and urban landscapes.Professionally he deals with architectural photography while his research is focused on on the evolution of the contemporary landscape, on architecture and man.

The fate of the shadows by Raquel Lagoa

The fate of the shadows

BY RAQUEL LAGOA

PT | EN

The visual narrative ‘The fate of the shadows‘ translates in photography the speech resulting from the overlapping of meanings – when the spiritual world intersects the physical world. The photographic sequence makes visible the path through the domestic space that is imperceptible in real life, and, at the same time, filters the contemporary gaze, increasingly superficial and acritical. From this dynamic, surfaces the pertinence of this project like a conversation (author/observer) that stimulates a critical and reflexive attitude towards what, currently, confines us in space - in our home.

The objects that physically inhabit the (real) interior space appear in the photographs printed in the projection of its respective shadows, its materiality is never revealed and these remain undefined accentuating the misticity if the very space where they remain. The monotony of the everyday, accentuated in the period of isolation, enables, consciously or uncounsciously, the reflection through these four walls that limits (our presence in) the space. This being said, the intention to decode and immobilize in images, the signs of passage of time in the intimate space surfaces, unveiling, in silence, an exterior increasingly closer and distant at the same time

Each photograph is a perspective of the interior that reveals an invasion of light in the intimate space, illuminating the surfaces and obscuring the objects, denouncing a clear overlapping of the immaterial world over the material world. The objects get lost in its insignificance and the images reflect a third dimension that foregoes these to exist.

Equally projected – the city – that, antagonically, paints the colors of neutral surfaces of the house and adds a complex pattern without hiding what is overlaps, like a translucid diluted wallpaper between the black stamp of shadows. The photographic narrative comprises a game of collages that highlight the inevitable confrontation between the house and the city, the interior and the exterior, the individual and the collective, the shadow and the light – the fiction and the real. Deep down, if the pandemic forced the isolaton, the isolation reinforced the importance of (knowledge of) inhabiting, with the body and with the gaze, the visible and the invisible.

“... A building is like a soap bubble. is bubble is perfect and harmonious if the breath has been evenly distributed from the inside. e exterior is the result of an interior.”
Le Corbusier, 1927 apud Colin Rowe e Fred Koetter, Collage city (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1978).

Bio

Raquel Lagoa (Figueira da Foz, 1996), student at Faculdade de Arquitetura da Universidade do Porto (2014 - 2020) with an academic path divided between art, science, literature and photography, architecture emerges as a synthesis of those worlds. The disquiet is the state of mind in permanent confrontation with the unpredictability of the current world.

Margem Sul by Luís Aniceto

Margem Sul by Luís Aniceto

Margem Sul is about my home town territory on the south bank of the Tagus river, just in front of Lisbon. Unlike the capital city, where its political and economic prominence is also built upon its symbolic space, the territories on the south bank lack this sovereign, historical and self-referential value in their urbanity. Suburbs were the most used adjective that pointed to a sub-value of its patrimonial reference.

It was this set of places, common in their status but differentiated in their morphology, a-historical and outside the spaces of power and desire, with which I felt affinity and attraction. Places where constructions, made at the taste of the times, heterogeneous, dispersed and diversified, generated in the landscape a strange hybridity, in everything far from the aseptic and rational standardization. Spaces in which the anonymous and indifferent buildings reign by the vulgar omnipresence of its facades and where cars, victims of accident and abandonment, pose mute as useless statuary. But also places that, between the pavement, the asphalt and the beaten path, have not yet been or are no longer, that seem suspended, unfinished and therefore renewedly liberating.

Margem Sul is a project developed over the years, in which I decided to concentrate my work in the search for an imaginary landscape. An imaginary, where the dryness of the soil is paired with the roughness of the facades and objects, in which the constant aggression of sunlight reflects the visible wear and tear of time and transformation. It is in this open field, under an endless blue sky where matter is cut into the void, that I roam through the territory and find a suspension of everyday life in which only my presence seems to inhabit.  

Bio
Luís Aniceto is a Portuguese photographer and educator currently working between Italy and Portugal. After working in Lisbon as a photo reporter for daily newspapers, he moved to Italy to join the collective of photographers Cesura, where he also had the opportunity to work with Alex Majoli. He co-founded ZONA Magazine, a photographic publication born from the interest in thinking and observing the territory of his hometown. He taught at the Portuguese Institute of Photography, where he was also responsible for the cultural program.

instagram: @luis__aniceto
www.luisaniceto.pt

Open Space, Landscape in Reverse by Xavier Delory

OPEN SPACE, LANDSCAPE IN REVERSE

BY XAVIER DELORY

A renewed dialogue between ruin and landscape.
From a modernist office tower of the Glorious Thirty in a state of transient decay, Open space reverses the "classic" ruin / nature representation that can be observed in Flemish landscape painting from the 17th century. Unlike the "composed veduta" by painters from the north where you can see ruins of ancient Rome surrounded by an Arcadian landscape where nature and culture unite harmoniously, here the landscape no longer welcomes ruin, it makes part of the ruin. The mountainous landscape used, refers to the aesthetics of the sublime, giving a tone of confrontation between man and the forces of nature.
By introducing a landscape “freely” into this brutalist setting, Open space also plays with the relationship with nature, materials and landscapes, especially with the spatial continuity from inside to outside which was at the center of the concerns of the first modernist architects who wanted to put man back at the heart of "Creation" thanks to technique.

Bio
Xavier Delory, born in Liège (Belgium) in 1973, studied interior architecture and photography. His work is on the frontiers of art and architecture, questioning the characteristics of digital photography in its relationship to reality and to the construction of an image. The artist uses digital photomontages to create fictional architectures.

https://www.xavierdelory.com/

Rays of Hope by Diego Duenhas

Rays of Hope

BY DIEGO DUENHAS

PT | EN

After nearly twenty days in quarantine, following the sad news that still haven’t ceased, I began reflecting about some projects/dreams of traveling to photograph that I’ve been continuously postponing. The question that persisted: “Will I survive to make those trips?“, “Will the future world be open to receive me?“, “How extensive and deep are the damages?“. Following this line of thought I began searching videos of some places in the world and I felt the need to photograph them in my own way. I opted to make artistic cuts using the long exposure technique from the standpoint of the mechanical eye of static photographic cameras fixed in moving vehicles. The result is this small series that I’ve titled “Rays of Hope“ in a wordplay between the visual effects obtained and the emotion that all mankind should share in this sad times we are living.

Bio

A designer and photographer since 1999, Diego Duenhas works in web development, UI focused projects, digital media advertising, social media and printed editorial work. He fuses in his design practice his skills in photography and audiovisual media. He graduated in Internet Systems Technology from the IFSP/S.J. in 2017 and he’s currently working as a freelancer.

instagram / @dduenhas

Of Dying and Living on by Daniel Chatard

Of Dying and Living on

BY DANIEL CHATARD

It‘s unusual for a story to begin with the death of a person. But with tissue donation, a process that can change another person‘s life from the ground up starts there. The German Society for Tissue Transplantation (DGFG) provides patients nationwide with corneas, amniotic tissue and heart valves, among other things - the DGFG maintains twelve tissue banks alone for this purpose. The photographs examine the complex system that makes the donation process possible and show the rooms in which tissue donation takes place. The selected photographs, taken in cooperation with the DGFG, explore tissue donation in Germany as a closed system within which the various locations photographed have different functions. They show rooms and still lifes that visualize important steps in the donation process - from the farewell room, where people see their deceased relatives one last time, to the surgery room, where the donations are used to heal the recipients.

Bio
Daniel Chatard (1996) is a Franco-German documentary and portrait photographer based in Hanover, Germany.In his work, Daniel has been mostly interested in the relationship between individuals and their societies, exploring how collective identities shape the human experience. He is available for assignments in Germany and worldwide.In 2015, Daniel started his studies of photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. In 2017, he interned as a photographer at Weser-Kurier in Bremen. He did an exchange semester at the faculty of journalism at Tomsk State University (Russia) in 2018.

http://chatard.de/
instagram / @daniel_chatard

The State of the Region by Marvin Systermans

The State of the Region

BY MARVIN SYSTERMANS

The structural change that is coming with the end of the coal mining industry in Germany is noticeable throughout the Lausitz region. The immense quantities of earth that have been moved have not only brought forward new landscapes; With the end of lignite mining, the Lausitz region is also looking for a new identity. This process takes place in different ways in the urban space, the renatured lake landscapes and the surroundings of the still active coal mines. The photo series "The State of the Region" examines places where traditional and young structures coexist, old structures slowly vanish and something new is created. On the one hand, the work deals with problems and conflict issues such as the environmental impact of coal mining and urban vacancy, while at the same time reflecting stereotypical representations of the Lausitz region. It describes the gradual departure of the region from the era of the coal industry, as well as the emergence of Europe's largest lake landscape.

Bio
Marvin Systermans is a german photographer, photo editor and communication designer working on a variety of different projects. His photographic work mainly focuses on different approaches to reflect on urban spaces, structural changes, and the human habitat in general.

Exhibitions

2019 — Solo Exhibition, Galerie im Foyer, Bremen
2019 — Group Exhibition, the horizons Zingst, Environmental Photo Festival
2019 — Group Exhibition, Wendener Hütte, Wenden
2019 — Solo Exhibition, Galery Flut, Bremen
2018 — Group Exhibition, Münzenberg Forum, Berlin
2018 — Group Exhibition, Osthaus Museum, Hagen
2017 — Group Exhibition, Summerset House, London
2017 — Group Exhibition, Forum of Design, Magdeburg
2016 — Group Exhibition, 1st Design Biennale, Havanna
2015 — Group Exhibition, German Youth Photography Award, German History Museum

Awards

2019 — Shortlist Vonovia Photo Award
2019 — Shortlist Canon New Talent Award 2019/2
2019 — Scholarship from the BFF Neuer Förderpreis 2019
2018 — Münzenbergforum Photo Award, 4. Place
2017 — Shortlist Felix Schoeller Photography Award, Best Emerging Artist
2017 — Shortlist Sony World Photography Award, Professional Architecture
2015 — German Youth Photography Award

Residency

2019 — BangaloResidency Goethe Institute, Max Mueller Bhavan.
In collaboration with Raisa Galofre, photographer

https://www.marvinsystermans.com/
instagram / @marvin.systermans

Future Rust, Future Dust by Loïc Vendrame

Future Rust, Future Dust

BY LOÏC VENDRAME

This long-term documentary project across several countries around the world aims to analyze the urban and architectural impact of the last world financial crisis and the burst of the real estate bubble.
Through a "concrete tsunami" exploration of ghost cities, aborted tourism projects, unused infrastructures, or roads leading to nowhere, this project plunges us into a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, vestige of this modern age mixing economic failures, corrupt elected officials, megalomaniac investors and dreams of home-ownership.
Witnesses of this big waste of – often public – money, these modern ruins hide human and ecological tragedies: indebted and defrauded people, homes finished but abandoned when so many people can’t find a place to live, and Nature disfigured for nothing, even in areas protected by law.

In a documentation process of showing the persistence of abandonment and incompleteness of these ‘non-places’ many years after the crisis, the visual approach combines aestheticism and graphism, while retaining these unfinished constructions in their surroundings landscape to reinforce the absurdity of these concrete skeletons, frozen in time, while Nature begins to slowly return back at its place.


‘The Spanish Sahara, the place that you'd wanna
Forget the horror here
Forget the horror here
Leave it all down here
It's future rust and it's future dust
I'm the fury in your head
I'm the fury in your bed
I'm the ghost in the back of your head’

Foals - Spanish Sahara (2010)

Bio
Geographer, now working in humanitarian NGO, and self-taught photographer, Loïc passion's for urban photography was born in 2012. Firstly attracted by contemporary architecture, he explored metropolises to find colorful and graphics architectural subjects, seeking to sublimate volumes and perspectives.

Since 2016, his photographic work shifted towards the study of the dynamics and changes of urban and peri-urban landscapes, through a monographic photo study documenting abandoned, stopped or under-utilized modern spaces throughout the world caused by the financial and real estate crisis.

www.loicvendramephotography.com
instagram / @loic_vendrame_photography

Predator/Protector by Nicholas Constant

Predator/Protector

BY NICHOLAS CONSTANT

Exploring the evolution of the battlefield and various forms of distance, Predator/Protector contemplates particular developments that may change the future of warfare (UAV/drone warfare) and what this means not just for the victim but the perpetrators as well. Using Sontag’s ideas of how war imagery on TV and internet distance us further from the actual happenings, as we relate these scenes to the cinematic, Predator/Protector attempts to combat this by showing that these issues materialise and take action from our space and in our time. Reflecting a stereotypical view of pastoral Britain, the land in these images challenge the idea of perception we have towards a modern day battlefield where the land would be completely different, yet the sky would be the same.

Adopting a similar aesthetic to that of British landscape painters then directing the camera towards the romanticised landscape, the project aims to contrast these idealistic and unintrusive views with the reality of what is taking place in these locations to show that they are part of the ever-expanding ‘battlespace’ in the information age. Romanticism derived from a time where the industrial revolution emerged, artists were drawn to look back to natural, idyllic settings in order to contrast and question their current political climate. Here, the images speak about our current time as a pivotal moment for the future of warfare. The interruptions in the landscape hint to how technological advances have meant that the battlefield could be considered to be here just as much as ‘there’ with soldiers technically commuting to and from the battlefield each day.

These images are combined with representations of aspects which cannot be seen from the public eye (the drones themselves and the operating rooms) this uncovers interesting parallels that would not be achievable photographing the actual subjects under investigation. Objects that have particular links to classical meanings are recontextualised to contrast names or places that are in use in the UAV programs. Such as the statue of Hermes, which is the name, the Israeli company ‘Elbit’ named one of its drones used in the 2014 Gaza attacks. The god Hermes is known for being a trickster and a traveller as well as escorting the dead to the river Styx. The fact they named an unmanned vehicle after an omnipresent being says a lot about the perception of the weapon.

Predator/Protector is the name of the new British drone where the name is being changed from Predator to Protector.

Bio
Internationally raised, London based artist with an interest in the spectacle of modern warfare. I explore spaces in which conflict occur particularly interested in the indirect effects on war; how they surface in the everyday and how these issues are dealt with in absence of mainstream media. Using a simple, unintrusive approach to many of the projects, I attempt to make invisible subjects visible through the use of landscape and context. Photographing in a slow and quiet manor, I try to force the viewer to study the image to extract the most information they can to then be reinforced by their own contextual knowledge and personal views. Consciously realising my place as a western spectator of modern conflict issues, I try to make work which aims to resonate with the western viewer in a non-confrontational way, believing empathy is most effective when the viewer pieces the puzzle together for themselves.

Instagram: @nicholas_constant
http://www.nicholasconstant.com/

Pairidaeza by Leonardo Magrelli

Pairidaeza

BY LEONARDO MAGRELLI

Paradise - from ancient Persian Pairidaeza (Pairi - around, Daeza - wall) a place surrounded by walls.

Iran has recently been included in Trump’s Muslim Ban list. This already mostly unknown land will now be even less accessible. This reason alone would suffice to motivate the choice of photographing the country under a different, detached and less propagandistic light. Other issues though emerge in the encounter with this region of the world. 

This series of photographs was taken while roaming the Iranian central desert and the cities within. So many different populations, religions and empires have followed one other for millennia, inhabiting these lands, reaching peaks of astonishing balance with their surroundings. Mithraic temples, Zoroastrian villages, Persian cities, they all were conceived and built in a perfect symbiosis with the land.

And yet today there seems to be a kind of ambiguous struggle to fit in these territories. A latent friction emerge between the human presence and the environment. Things seems to be out of place: ambiguous objects, unfinished buildings, indefinite traces of the mankind are left behind, lying isolated and scattered on the ground. It’s “the mutual interference between the landscape and those who live it” as Baltz wrote in his Review of the “The New West”. 

It may seems outdated nowadays to still talk about the issues raised by the new topographers more than forty years ago. But it must be kept in mind that Iran hasn’t yet started to develop a proper sensibility to the ecological and aesthetical problems of the landscape. The way people live the territory and live inside the territory no longer relies on the fusion with the surroundings, but rather on the separation from it. A separation that becomes quite paradoxical and absurd in many cases. The vast expanses of the uplands are now littered with industrial structures, commercial areas and various buildings. Most of them are surrounded with walls along their outer perimeter. Who are they keeping out? What are they keeping out, in these completely empty and uninhabited territories? Only the landscape is cut out, only the desert, the mountains and their extensive space. One could wonder if this derives from the ancient Persian gardens, however, the paradise is not anymore within these walls, but outside them, hidden from the view.

Bio
Born in Rome in 1989, holds a BA in Design and Architecture from “La Sapienza” university in Rome. While still studying, starts working with the photographer Marco Delogu, director of Fotografia – International Rome’s Photography Festival, and chief editor of the publishing house Punctum Press. Aside from collaborating with the organization of the festival, Leonardo also designed many of the books published by Punctum. Later starts working on his own, to focus more on his photography. In the last years his works has been published in several printed and online photography magazines, and has been displayed in collective exhibitions and festivals.

http://www.leonardomagrelli.com

Beyond The Ordinary & Updated Landscape by Guillaume Hebert

Beyond The Ordinary & Updated Landscape

BY GUILLAUME HEBERT

These series are a hybrid genre that combine pieces of modern landscapes with, in the background, landscapes that come from old and famous paintings. The name of this series is a notion that tells us about the changes created by urbanisation in our modern societies. These works invite us to compare the vision of an ancient painter with the vision of a modern photographer, in order to remodel our perception of the environment in an aesthetic dimension.

Bio
Guillaume Hebert, also called Guillelmus Paulus Julianus, is a French visual artist more focus on photography born in 1969 in Normandy. He graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Caen (DNSEP : National Superior Diploma of Plastic Arts). He started truly photography in Taiwan in the year 2012. He stays there for 6 years and goes regularly to mainland China. He currently collaborates with a Shanghai Gallery: M Art Center and participates in many festivals and art fair. After his pilgrimage he returned to Europe and settled in Berlin for one year. Back in France, he currently lives and works in the Papal city, Avignon.

www.guillaumehebert.com

brasilia, off the map by Cyrille Weiner

BRASILIA, OFF THE MAP

BY CYRILLE WEINER

Arriving in Brasilia is a strange feeling: an illusionary city that would reveal itself very slowly. From afar, the landscape is flat. Then, above the emptiness, a vibrant shape appears in the bright sun, like a giant model growing up from the ground. The vision speeding faster as the city progressively appears. Unbelievable.

Brasilia is the capital of a vast country. But it is not a city. It is the drawing of a city, a cross in the middle of the desert. An act of possessing a territory, perfectly and globaly achieved from scratch by architect Oscar Niemeyer and urbanist Lucio Costa, under the impulse of president Joscelino Kubitschek.

I came to see a city. I discovered an infinite garden. A wasteland. A suspended space that stretches out of human dimension.
I walked for hours. Off the map and its limits in an urban space that has not yet been conceived for a walker. I met a few men, as my own reflection in a mirror. They walked to the rodoviaria – the main bus station – at the crossing of the two wings of the Plano Piloto.

The public space in Brasilia is the whole territory. Cities’ grounds are covered with ashalt. In Brasilia, despite the sophisticated urban shaping. the red earth does not disappear.

Time is suspended. Life seems to have stopped the shining day of April 21st 1960 : the inauguration day of its new capital, built ex nihilo. Strange scenes of parades of workers, soldiers and officials, between scattered brand new futuristic buidings, like an oversized movie set. A utopia that became real in a thousand days.
Perpetual comeback, perpetual availability for the future.
I came to Brasilia with the feeling of coming back. I left it asking myself if Brasilia exists. It seems to. Not as a myth or a symbol of the modernist utopia, but an available open playground for all the improvisations of all of us.
The real monumentality of Brasilia is its emptiness.

Bio
Photographer born in 1976 and trained at the Ecole nationale supérieure Louis Lumière. His work has been published by numerous international magazines (M Le Monde, Foam, British Journal of Photography, foam, Art Press…) and exhibited at MAC Lyon, at the Rencontres d’Arles, the laurent mueller gallery in Paris and at the Villa Noailles in Hyères. He was the laureate of the Prix Lucien Hervé and Rudolf Hervé in 2012 and the author of Presque île (2009) and Twice (2015). Cyrille Weiner recurrently poses the question of space, and how individuals appropriate themselves to their living spaces, distanced from directives coming from “on high.” Progressively leaving the documentary register, he proposes a universe crossed by fiction, that he establishes with exhibitions, editorial projects and installations.

www.cyrilleweiner.com

To Name A Mountain by Alfonso Almendros

TO NAME A MOUNTAIN

BY ALFONSO ALMENDROS

In the spring of 1863, the landscape-painter Albert Bierstadt, started his second tour across the Rocky Mountains with his friend the American writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow.

The story says that during their expedition, the painter was astonished by the view of an enormous mountain. Immediately he made a sketch where a dark grey storm crosses an imaginary horizon of gigantic peaks blown out of proportion. Bierstadt entitled his painting “A storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mount Rosalie” in honor of his traveling companion’s wife. The work was interpreted as a representation of his emotional anguish and the mountain, unnamed until that date, was named Mount Rosalie in honor of the woman that Bierstadt secretly loved.

Most critics thought Mount Rosalie was impossibly high. The painting and Bierstadt’s work seem to talk about desire, but always through the excess and the violation of a reality that only seemed suggestive for the artist when it was conducted by his imagination. His idea of beauty oscillated between the sublime exaltation of his emotions and the calculated effectiveness of the forms. Both contradictory notions though, is it not an audacity and a frustration at the same time to try to reach a summit? Nevertheless, the purpose of naming a mountain is an act charged of poetry. It tells us about the desire of possession and permanence. It reminds us, through creation, of the memory of those we have loved.

Bio
Alfonso Almendros is a Spanish photographer and lecturer living in Madrid. He graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor in History of Art from the University of Valencia, an Associate Degree in Artistic Photography from E.A.S.D Valencia and a MA Photography in Efti Madrid.

His work has been exhibited internationally, including exhibitions in Encontros da Imagem in Braga, Sala Kursala from the University of Cádiz, the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico, the King Juan Carlos I Center of New York, Article Gallery in Birmingham or Guernsey Photography Festival and granted in several international competitions like the V Galician Prize of Contemporary Photography, the Roberto Villagraz Grant 2016, the Photographic Museum of Humanity 2014 grant or the Grand Prix Fotofestiwal 2011.

Since 2015, he is a visiting professor at the Instituto Nicaragüense de Enseñanza Audiovisual and the National Cinematheque of Nicaragua, Node Center of Curatorial Studies in Berlin and the IED Madrid.

alfonsoalmendros.com
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ELEGY by Justin Kimball

ELEGY

BY JUSTIN KIMBALL

Statement
Between 2012 and 2016 I photographed in small, all but defunct towns in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.  Most of them were company towns that relied on natural resources to survive: coal, steel, lumber, paper and farming. These businesses are long gone now, the local economy dried up and blown away. The pictures I have been making in these towns are of the people who live there now, their homes, backyards, the streets and the buildings that once supplied the town its livelihood and economy. While the pictures are about a specific region, they also point to a growing invisible, yet ubiquitous, part of the American landscape. The body of work is meant to pose questions about what happens when things get hard; these are questions about struggle, hope and what it is to be human. These are always important questions, but in this  political moment they are, if possible, even more critical.

-JK

Bio
Justin Kimball was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1961.  He earned a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an M.F.A in Photography from the Yale University School of Art. The recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographers Fellowship, a Kittredge Educational Grant from Harvard University and the Project Development Grant from Center in Santa Fe NM, he is the author of the monographs Where We Find Ourselves, Center for American Places, Pieces of String and Elegy, Radius Books. His work can be found in numerous museum collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Art, the George Eastman Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Kimball’s images have been included in such publications as DoubleTake, Harper’s, PDN, Photo Metro, Photograph and Picture magazines. 

Kimball has taught photography for more than twenty years and is currently a Professor of Art at Amherst College in Amherst MA, USA.

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