Topophilia

 

TOPOPHILIA

BY PETER BRAUNHOLZ


This project is about poetry of space, found in rural regions all over of the European continent. From 2015 to 2018 Peter Braunholz worked in all european countries and traveled from village to village, more than 20,000 miles in total. The displayed images are from Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, Portugal and Italy.

 There are no people in the photographs, yet immanent in all of them is a sense of human presence. As we compare these images, we feel that the series also questions how people live all over Europe, how people from different regions take possession and comprehend spaces differently, and how culture transforms spaces in the way the economic and cultural logic drives our lives.

 The work is also related to Arthur Danto´s idea of art as "The Transfiguration of the Commonplace" (Harvard University Press, 1981). Peter Braunholz has chosen common small town spaces away from traffic routes as the motifs for his work. He puts the focus not only on their material, but also on their immaterial quality. Therefore his work serves as an example for Danto’s ideas that art gives obvious things an oddness – it defamiliarises – and artworks have immaterial as well as material constituents.

 You will find more images from the series and of Peter Braunholz's work on his website. The series contains 70 selected photographs in total. A greater selection has been published in the monographic book "Photographic Realities" by Kehrer Publishing, Germany.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

 Peter Braunholz (b. 1963) is a photographic artist based in Frankfurt, Germany. His work has received numerous international awards and has been shown worldwide. Today he focuses on the volatile and often model-like identity of common space.



 

LINKS


http://www.peterbraunholz.de
https://www.instagram.com/peter.braunholz/

 

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

 

Picture of Health by Andy Feltham

 
 

PICTURE OF HEALTH

BY ANDY FELTHAM

“The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”.

Aneurin Bevan, the Health Minister who created the NHS 


Since its inception in 1948, the National Health Service has been the prized jewel in Britains welfare crown. As mortality rates decrease year-on-year, the demand for cutting-edge therapies, and their associated tariffs, continues to rise. A victim of its own success, the NHS faces its biggest fight to date.

Picture of Health is my take on a small corner of the NHS today. Shot over two years, starting in February 2016, I was granted access to all areas across Northampton General Hospital, a mid-sized district general hospital in Northamptonshire, UK.

In part I wanted to explore the unseen recesses of the hospital, hinting at the hidden complexities inherent within the delivery of care. Further, I hoped to highlight chronic underfunding across the NHS, which has meant that the provision of safe care to the populace of Northamptonshire has become increasingly difficult. Despite - or perhaps because of - this, it was also the aim of this project to celebrate the hard work and commitment shown by staff at Northampton General Hospital in providing the Best Possible Care to their patients on a daily basis.

Bio
Andy Feltham is a self-taught photographer who lives in Northampton, UK, who also works part-time within the healthcare setting at his local hospital. He has been exhibited in the UK, USA and Italy and featured in numerous publications, both online and in print. He has also been commissioned to work in the commercial as well as the fine art setting.

Feltham seeks to create a tension within each photograph by using meticulous framing, exposure and technique to detach the subject from its surroundings. This lends a subtle disquiet to the underlying themes of beauty, mortality and humour that hallmark his work. 

www.andyfelthamphotography.com
www.instagram.com/andyfelthamphotography/

 

Garden Of Delight

 
 

GARDEN OF DELIGHT

BY NICK HANNES

Nick Hannes (1974, Antwerp) travelled to Dubai five times between 2016 and 2018 in order to put his reservations and prejudices about the city to the test. It quickly became clear that Dubai represented the extreme form of the topics that he had been tackling for years. The city was a case study in breakneck, market-driven urbanisation; the ultimate playground for globalisation and capitalism without limits or ethics; or, to put it another way, Dubai was an out-of-control entertainment hall, meticulously designed to serve unbridled consumerism.   

Hannes’ photographs function as a razor-sharp knife that uses humour and irony to slice through this metropolis of the future. What remains, in the words of the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, is a “Generic City”, without history, personality or identity; a city that is “indifferent to its inhabitants”. To Hannes, it is a place where “human activities are reduced to their economic value”. 

The Netherlandish painter Hieronymous Bosch painted his iconic triptych Garden of Earthly Delights over 500 years ago. The central panel depicts a false paradise, right before the Fall. It is a dystopian image to which Hannes – from his outsider position – likes to refer. He reveals Dubai as a Theatrum Mundi, at times with dismay, at others with dumbfoundedness, but always with a desire to understand. Is a model like Dubai economically and socially sustainable – or are we still, 500 years after Bosch, living in the same ill-omened theatre of the world? 

Joachim Naudts

Biography

Nick Hannes (b. 1974, Antwerp) studied photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, after which he started working as a photojournalist. Since 2006, however, he has devoted himself entirely to his personal artistic practice. His work is documentary and socially critical, and has a strong socio-political slant. Using humour, irony and visual metaphors, he focuses on the problematic relationship between man and his environment.

Nick published 3 books: ‘Red Journey’ (Lannoo 2009) deals with the transitional phase in post-communist society. ‘Mediterranean. ‘The Continuity of Man’ (Hannibal 2014) focuses on various contemporary issues such as mass-tourism, urbanization, migration and crises of various kinds in the Mediterranean region. ‘Garden of Delight’ (Hannibal/André Frère Editions, 2018) showcases Dubai as the ultimate playground of globalization and capitalism, and raises questions about authenticity and sustainability.
‘Garden of Delight’, was awarded the Magnum Photography Award in 2017 and the Zeiss Photograohy Award in 2018. 
Nick exhibited at FotoMuseum Antwerp, Fotofestiwal Lodz, Organ Vida Zagreb, Stadtische Galerie Iserlohn, Centro Andaluz de la Fotografia Almeria, Triennial of Photography Hamburg, Photomed (Beirut), FotoIstanbul among others.
Since 2008 he teaches documentary photography at KASK/The School of Arts in Ghent (B).
Hannes is represented by Panos Pictures in London.

Website
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I'm Here With You

 
 

I’M HERE WITH YOU

BY GOWUN LEE

The majority of LGBTQ people in South Korea hide their true identities from their colleagues, friends and their families. Despite a recent surge in LGBTQ activism, Korea remains a very conservative country and those who come out face being disowned by family or dismissed from their employers. Many Koreans still express bitter hostility toward LGBTQ people, while others simply deny their existence. The Korean military actively hunts down gay soldiers, going so far as to mount sting operations using gay dating apps. And when someone does come out, parents and family members often choose to ignore the truth.

This project literally and metaphorically represents sexual minorities living in Korea who are forced to hide their sexual identity. The LGBTQ individuals photographed—all facing away from the camera—remind us of how Korean society continues to neglect and refuse to accept them. By creating these images, my intent is to both implicate the viewer in the nation’s larger refusal to acknowledge the identity of LGBTQ individuals and, more importantly, to spur us all to take action and change this attitude once and for all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gowun Lee (b. 1984) is a visual artist who utilizes photography. She explores themes of a social issue such as LGBTQ in South Korea and human relationship in conceptual ways. She moved to South Korea from New York for her ongoing project.

She received BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. She has been shortlisted for Tokyo International Photo Competition, ZEISS Photography Award 2018, 2018 Aperture Summer Open: The Way We Live Now.

Her images have been featured in Open Society Foundations, The Guardian, CNN Style, Bubblegumclub, Aperture Foundation, Korean daily, Monthly photo, ZEISS LensPire, and World Photography Organization.

Her work has been included in exhibitions at the United Photo Industries Gallery in New York, Onfoto Gallery in Taiwan, SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York, Tak Gallery in Seoul, MayFlay in Seoul, Wonder Fotoday in Taiwan, Head On Photo Festival in Australia , Somerset house in London and Upcoming exhibition T3 Photo Festival in Tokyo.


Web: www.gowunlee.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/gowunlee_



 

4TH WALL

 

4TH WALL

BY KLAUS FRAHM

Klaus Frahm, born 1953 on a farm close to the City of Hamburg, studied social anthropology and journalism.Being self-taught as a photographer, he begun his professional career in 1980. The main topic of his works is architecture, now and then with political- ethical or social subtexts.
His works have been widely exhibited, published and collected.
 

synopsis

Since 2010 klaus Frahm works on a new photographic project: theater and opera-houses. Known for his works on architecture and design published in nimerous books and exhibitions this theme seems not so far away from that genre.
Other photographers come into the mind - Hiroshi Sugimoto and his cinemas or Candida Hofer with Paris-Opera, but Frahm’s photographs make differente point. While Sugimoto explores the empty center and Hofer cools down the opulent decor in bright light, Frahm explores the scene inside the scene, reversing the classic connotations of theater.
The history of modern theaters begins in 1585 with Andrea Palladio’s Teatro Oplimpico in Vicenza. It was the first theater to be covered by a roof. In Europe and especially in Germany we look at a long tradition of theater-buildings. More than 90 Opera-houses still exist today only in Germany.
The photographic project deals with theater and opera stages. “The Fourth Wall” is a term known by actores and means the opening of the stage towards the stage, a window in a box to look at, where the scene happens. In this series the direction of the viewpoint is opposite, taking the perspective of the actor, the camera is far behind the iron curtain.
In the images the space for the audience is becoming flat like postcard and the real space of the theaters, the stage, is explored in many directions, looking up or to the sides and going into details. Thus we get aware of a work-space hidden behind the red curtain. It is the specific perspective of the camera, which dissolves the order of what is in front or behind, questioning the hierarchy of stage and audiente as well as the image. For the French philosopher Lacan an image is a look put out, the lightpoints sending out rays to the viewer - the image looks at the onlooker.
The contrast of machinery and the “sofa-room” is exciting, if you imagine for example the “Berliner Ensemble” where all the plays of Berthold Brecht were acted out for an audiente sitting in bourgeois neo-baroque surrounding. -Where is the stage?

 

OUR LIFE IN THE SHADOWS

 
 

OUR LIFE IN THE SHADOWS

BY TANIA FRANCO KLEIN

Our Life in the Shadows is influenced by the pursuit of the American Dream lifestyle in the Western World and contemporary practices such as leisure, consumption, media overstimulation, eternal youth, and the psychological sequels they generate in our everyday private life. The project seeks to evoke a mood of isolation, desperation, vanishing, and anxiety, through fragmented images, that exist both in a fictional way and a real one. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han says we live in an era of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform. We have left behind the immunological era, and now experience the neuronal era characterized by neuropsychiatric diseases such as depression, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, burnout syndrome and bipolar disorder. The constant need to escape, to always look outside. My characters find themselves almost anonymous, melting in places, vanishing into them, constantly looking for any possibility of escape. They find themselves alone, desperate and exhausted. Constantly in an odd line between trying and feeling defeated.

About the author
Tania Franco Klein (b. 1990) started her photography praxis while gaining her BA Architecture in Mexico City, which took her to pursue her Master in Photography at the University of the Arts London. Her work is highly influenced by her fascination with social behavior and contemporary practices such as leisure, consumption, media overstimulation, emotional disconnection, the obsession with eternal youth, the American dream in the Western world and the psychological sequels they generate in our everyday life. Franco-Klein work has been reviewed and featured by international critique including Aperture Foundation, The British Journal of Photography, Fisheye Magazine and I-D Magazine (UK), Der Greif, amongst others. And has been exhibited in London, Budapest, Mexico, Spain, France, Germany, New York, Vermont, Photo Basel and during the Los Angeles Month of Photography 2017 by Lucie Foundation. She has obtained the Sony World Photography Awards, The Lensculture Exposure Awards, The Felix Schoeller Photo Award of Germany Nominee, amongst others.

 

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INSIDE AARHUS

 

INSIDE AARHUS

BY INÊS D´OREY

 

Inês d'Orey was born in Porto in 1977. She has a degree in Photography (London College of Printing, 2002), receiving a scholarship from the Portuguese Center of Photography between 1999 and 2002. Inês won the Fnac New Talent prize in photography in 2007. She works as a freelance photographer, for private clients and public institutions. She frequently publishes and exhibits her work in Portugal and abroad. She published in 2010 her first book "Mecanismo da troca" and in 2011 her second book "porto interior". Inês d'Orey is part of Dear Sir Agency and is represented by Presença gallery.

 

Artist statement

What interests me the most in photography, is to explore its ambiguous quality. One image is the selection of a small fragment of the world that, despite its connection to reality, can be very much subjective, personal and intimate. I like this capacity that photography has of interpreting reality in a different or unexpected way. I think I could say that my work conceptually stages reality. I’m more interested in “creating a moment”, more than “catching the moment”. 

 

Synopsis

Inside Aarhus is a series of photographs of interior public spaces of the danish city. Aarhus is represented by some of its most charismatic buildings together with neutral and banal places. Open public buildings are depicted, as well as social but restricted private areas. What they all have in common is the devoid of all human presence. Inês d´Orey aims for a tense and unclear narrative, looking always for the less obvious perspective. 

 

FÉMIS

 

FÉMIS

BY MAITETXU ETCHEVERRIA

 

Maitetxu Etcheverria (b.1975) is a French photographer and graduate of the National Photogaphy School, 2001. Her work captures fictional constructions that generate and shelter the imagination. This includes the cinema, television and theater as well as our immediate environment, which all provide her with infinite material and a profusion of artificial worlds that are "truer than nature" albeit nourished by archetypes. As witnesses and mirrors of the world, they play the role of revelators of our collective culture. The photographer's way of seeing offers us a panoramic view of a simulated and hyperrealistic "fabricated possibility." Maitetxu's photographs set up an endless play of "images of images" that confuse our ability to define that which is proposed to our view, highlighting the ambiguity as much of the subject as its representation.

 

synopsis

This first studio experience took place on the premises of the Fémis, the School of Image and Sound Professions (l’Ecole des Métiers de l’Image et du Son) in Paris. The photographs are of decors created by set design students for the school’s short film graduation projects. This work gave rise to the publication of a monograph, Décors, published by Belleza Infinita Editions, in 2004.

 

DOCA 13

 

DOCA 13

BY LUIS ANICETO

Luis Aniceto studied Industrial Design and attended the Portuguese Photography Institute. For three years he worked as a press photographer. He currently collaborates with the Italian photographers collective “Cesura”. He was Alex Majoli’s assistant in the project “Offside Brazil”.

Synopsis

Almada. I grew up with one of the shipyards planted outside of my balcony and early on I memorize the industrial noises. A multitude of workers operate my imaginary and together with them many sailors who arrive from all over the world in oil tankers. The strength of this shipyard was reflected in trade union struggles and in the political-industrial relations in the Portuguese naval economy, an area for dispute and conflict. Besides being one of the drivers of the national economy, the “Lisnave” yard was also one of the main industrial drivers for the local economy, forcing the restructuration of the urban territory as well as the growth of local commerce, which was prosperous and active back then. After countless crisis, “Lisnave” closed its facilities in 2000. Its closing reverberated in the entire county, where slowly was realized how important this gigantic proportioned industry was and how it represented a time that had come to an end. Since then “Lisnave” have been undergoing a process of abandonment and degradation, while it’s still uncertain what to do with these terrains. 


Editor´s note

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

 

A TELA DE UMA HISTÓRIA QUE NÃO SE ACENDE

 

A TELA DE UMA HISTÓRIA QUE NÃO SE ACENDE

BY ANA PEREIRA

 

Ana Pereira (Mozambique, 1974) has a Master degree in Audiovisual Communication, majoring in Photography and Documentary Film, by ESMAE - Instituto Politécnico do Porto. Among the many articles written: "O Rosto na Escuridão" for ARCHIVE, as well as the essay "Novos formatos editoriais, velho, novo, velho" for the "Reflex" collection. In her texts she addresses the evolution of photographic portrait in the context of documentary photography as well as the evolution of narrative structures in documentary photography. She participated in several solo and group exhibitions which we highlight "O mundo das pequenas coisas - imagens de um presente em pausa" at the Centro Português de Fotografia, in Porto. She was teacher for the discipline of Image and Sound at the Escola Artística Soares dos Reis, in Porto, also teaching Graphic Design and Publicity, at ESEIG/IPP and teacher for Audiovisual Communication Technology degree, at IPP. She is currently "chief photographer"  for Mademoiselle Photo - photographic reports. In her work, the practice of the scene photography in the context of theater has been an important theme.

 

Synopsis

A body of work about Porto downtown movie theaters. The closed ones and/or running parallel activities other than exhibiting films. To search the images, ghosts, memories and particularities of each room. Once the doors are opened and the lights are on, life returns to fill these spaces.

Just like those scenes from the movies, as soon as the lights come on, life returns to the amusement parks and slowly one begins to hear the sound of carousels and of people in the background.

In these cinemas, one can feel the smells and see the visible traces of the stories of the past, in the images, in the messages, in the photographs, in all memory remembrances. Whenever I sat in the chairs looking at the screen, I could almost feel the noise of people coming in for the next session. As if those times when I was shooting, were only short intervals between films, between stories.

 

Artist's statement

Yes words have weight.

Volume, size and color.

The words are almost the entire field of what we established with each other.

The images are the materialization of the world within.

They are also the factual proof of what is, what was, what could be.

I am interested in beautiful things.

In beauty there is no conflict and I like that no duality.

A bubble rest, a peaceful navigational float.

One of these days, I found a sentence of Chuck Palahniuk that goes something like this:

"Your whole life is the discovery of who you were!"

I thought it was good for a skeptic.

 

AIDOS

 

AIDOS

BY IOANNA SAKELLARAKI


Shame is a painful, social emotion that forms the collective conscience. I grew up in a country where shaming is a lifelong tradition for positioning someone in society. In my effort to draw the portrait of Greece in transition, I came across a constant worry steaming from comparison of the self's state of being with the ideal social context's standard. What interests me in this work is the idea behind what we see, what we feel, how we express desire and what we believe is possible, all filtered through, and constrained by, society. Keeping in mind the idea of naivety behind our choices, I hope to document the freedom of the commonplace and the individual struggle of the becoming. In Greek mythology, Aidos was the goddess of shame, modesty and humility..


About the author
Born in 1989 in Athens, and Ioanna is a graduate of photography, journalism and culture. She is interested in the relationship between her photography practice and ideas relating to aesthetically “mapping” the historical and contemporary context of relations with global and social systems of power. She has exhibited her work in three solos and several collective exhibitions in Europe. She is currently a Contributor for Barcroft Media and Caters News. Ioanna received an Honourable Mention from: International Photography Awards, Prix De La Photographie Paris Awards, Neutral Density Awards in 2017. She is currently based in Brussels.

All photos have been taken with medium format (6x6) analogue camera Zenza Bronica SQ-A between 2017-2018

website

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PORTRAITS FROM HOME

 

PORTRAITS FROM HOME

BY SARAH MALAKOFF

 

Sarah Malakoff (Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1972). Her work has been widely exhibited in both solo and group shows nationally and are included in several public and private collections. She has been awarded Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2001 and 2011 and a Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2011. She is Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

 

Synopsis

For as long as I can remember, I have had a preoccupation with domestic interiors.  As a child, I constantly rearranged the furniture, rugs, and even functions of the rooms in my house.  My long-term photographic project looks at the ways we arrange our most intimate spaces.  Our tastes, personalities, quirks and culture are expressed through our décor choices – sometimes intentionally, but often without realizing bits of our most authentic selves have seeped to the surface.  

In this body of work, I look closely at the portraits we display within the home. These diverse but venerated paintings and photographs of family, ancestors, historical figures, pets, and even celebrities seem to point to a longing for connection to community both past and present.  They resonate, often humorously or uncannily, with the other objects and architecture that surround them.  This collection of private spaces asks the viewer to imagine the people who inhabit them and their relationship to the portraits’ subjects.

These are digital C prints at 20" x 24" made from scans of 4x5 film.

 

Editor´s note

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