ROSIE APPLES: STREETS IN THE SKY, THE AYLESBURY ESTATE

 

ROSIE APPLES: STREETS IN THE SKY, THE AYLESBURY ESTATE

scopio aboveground: city

This project is based on the community of the notorious Aylbesury estate.
Located in South East London, the estate is reported to have a crime rate every three hours. Due ot the current financial crisis in Britain the estates third promise of a regeneration, has failed yet again due to financial problems including a recent 20 million cut.
This project aims to shed light on the residents and current climate on the estate. Failed promises and empty streets.

Technical notes
All shot on Mamiya 645, Kodak portra


Contact
rosie@rosieapplesphotography.co.uk

 

MARIO LIFTENEGGER: CONFLICT ON THE WALL - MURALS IN BELFAST

 

MARIO LIFTENEGGER: CONFLICT ON THE WALL - MURALS IN BELFAST

scopio aboveground: architecture

The project documentats the phenomenon of erecting murals in the streets of the Northern Irish capital Belfast and their changing process over the years.

Descriptive Memory

This photo series deals with the phenomenon of erecting murals in the streets of Belfast. Through this series of photographs, which were shot over the duration of four years, the variety of the murals – which were erected on walls – and the changing process of the murals should be highlighted. The documented murals deal with geopolitical themes as well as the memory of fallen paramilitaries. So they reflect the century-old conflict between Loyalists/Unionists/Protestants and Republicans/Nationalists/Catholics in Northern Ireland. Beside this also the role of the murals as a landmark between the interface areas of the two cities (the living areas are devided in Republicans/Nationalists/Catholics and Loyalists/Unionists/Protestants residential areas. These areas abut on each other and there the Murals function as a sign for inhabitants and foreigners in which area they are) should be documented.


Technical notes
Colophon: Belfast 2007 to 2010


Contact
mario_liftenegger@gmx.at

 

PEDRO VANZELER COLAÇO: DRIVE IN

 

scopio aboveground: architecture (h. mention)

Tentei através deste trabalho abordar o tema Arquitectura de uma forma menos convencional, promovendo uma análise dinâmica da organização/ocupação do espaço.

Para tal, o formato panorâmico das imagens foi o que me pareceu mais indicado por permitir uma visualização mais “cinematográfica” do assunto que, aliado a imagens onde o efeito de movimento foi assumido, permitiu, a meu ver, fazer o contraponto com a imobilidade por vezes associada às obras arquitectónicas, uma imobilidade se quisermos aparente, uma vez que todo espaço acaba por adquirir vida própria.


Contact
pvcolaco@gmail.com

 

CARLOS AZEREDA MESQUITA: THE RADIANT CITY

 

CARLOS AZEREDA MESQUITA: THE RADIANT CITY

scopio aboveground: city

Serialismo ready-made - Imagens de uniformidade e transgressão na cidade pós-socialista.

O projecto parte de uma pesquisa desenvolvida sobre o enquadramento arquitectónico do legado socialista em Budapeste, na Hungria. Através de um exercício de fotografia panorâmica que activa alguns dos princípios sugeridos pelo serialismo, questiona-se o próprio condicionamento sociopolítico imposto pelas matrizes urbanas desenvolvidas na era socialista, bem como as valências de uma sociedade outrora anónima e assombrada por gradações miméticas. Num apelo irónico e consciencioso ao re-questionamento de projectos utópicos como “A Cidade Radiosa” do arquitecto Le Corbusier (que dá o título a este projecto), é aqui posta em causa a sua deturpada cópia e implementação nos países da Europa de Leste, naquele que é um subtil exercício de arqueologia sobre o urbanismo actual num projecto que se posiciona nos campos da antropologia e sociologia tanto quanto no da fotografia. Todas estas séries são panoramas reais (e não recolecções de elementos similares em diferentes partes da cidade; comprovar que, por exemplo, as roulottes estão na mesma rua é um exercício simples bastando seguir os edifícios no segundo plano e constatar que algumas janelas aparecem repetidas de umas imagens para as outras) e mostram objectos que co-existem no espaço lado a lado com a configuração mostrada nas séries.

Technical notes
Impressão digital
60x40cm cada imagem individual

Contact
carlosazeredomesquita@gmail.com

 

ANDY SPAIN: ECOCITIES

 

ANDY SPAIN: ECOCITIES

scopio aboveground: city

The images question our association with our daily environments and dream of a positive future in which cities can adapt to changing climates.

I’m an architectural photographer based in London. For the last few years I have been working on a series of images called ecocities. I use commissioned and personal work and combine this with imagery from stock libraries to produce my own version of an imagined future for London.

Sometimes the intervention in the image is subtle (viewers aren’t sure if the giant wind turbine by the heritage site of St. Paul’s really exists) and other times it is more obvious (there aren’t too many flamingos and fishing boats moored up along the Thames!). My main motivation is to produce a positive outlook.

All too often we look at environmental destruction as Armageddon for the world and solutions are seen as cutting back, stopping, going back in time rather than embraced as a potential for a more positive future.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in architecture and planning. Planning this new world is of incredible importance and designing new ways to live within it equally so. My project serves to bring these questions to the fore. Art and design must lead the way to a better, greener society.

Technical notes
Shot on location around London on a Canon 5dMK2 and then images comped together in Photoshop.

Contacts
andy@asvisual.co.uk
www.asvisual.co.uk

 

SAMEER TAWDE: CITY EYES

 
 

SAMEER TAWDE: CITY EYES


Following the journeys in a metropolis like Mumbai, this route focuses on the ambitions of the city with a specific interest on its surrounding urban landscape. The images seek to reflect  the overall urban character with an assortment of meanings.Through this perspective it relates to and pursues the city dreams.

Description

  1. CityEyes_1 – Planes are captured in a multiple exposure set over a span of time at a construction site near the Mumbai International airport. As India’s economy is booming,  its financial capital ( Mumbai ) is rapidly growing with new urban characters as is suggested by the visual metaphorical sequence of the planes above.

  2. CityEyes_2 – A huge residential complex built by a corporate company is almost complete in South Mumbai.

  3. CityEyes_3 – A top view of the only 7 road junction in Mumbai, the Jacob Circle.

  4. CityEyes_4 – A daily life at the Mohamad Ali road in Mumbai. This road has parallel streets of mostly wholesale and retails markets  and thus has a busy chaotic experience.

  5. CityEyes_5 – A commercial hoarding is backlight from an another source of light near one of the city highways.

  6. CityEyes_6 – A hill divides the skyscraper at Powai and the underconstruction building at Kanjurmarg in the north eastern suburbs of Mumbai.

  7. CityEyes_7 – A view from the old bridge showing the new road and railway bridges that connect Mumbai’s  well planned satellite city, Navi Mumbai.

  8. CityEyes_8 - A regular night sky over the central Mumbai suburbs near the International  airport.

  9. CityEyes_9 – An old residential neighbourhood in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai.

  10. CityEyes_10 – A late evening rush hours at the Eastern Express highway in the background of a residential complex.

Technical notes

All the photographs submitted are shot in a 35mm digital format and are available in the following print sizes : ( 20 x 30 ) inches  and ( 30 x 40 ) inches  Colour Mode : RGB

Contact

sameer.tawde@gmail.com

 

PEGGY FAYE: POETRY OF THE BANAL

 

My main purposes is to show the poetry and aesthetics of the banal, the everyday and to show the universality of the human experiences.      

Showing the detailed urban sceneries allows the viewers to think of the city and its spaces as a whole, autonomous, living organism.

The human presence as only an evocation, not a tangible reality, is yet very strong and various.

The close-up compositions show the everyday banalities of lives.

Taken from a larger long-term project called “Face aux murs” (“In front of the walls”), the photographs of abandoned or neglected everyday life objects are like artefacts of the contemporary life. There's a kind of desolation coming from them but never depression or pessimism.

On the contrary, my images are thought as a way to show the poetry and the aesthetics of the banal, of the mundane. Evocation is strong, anyone can refers to those depending on its own social and sensorial experiences.

Moreover, among hundreds of them, you'll find the similarities of differences, the universality of our existences, from East to West.

We have to think again about the everyday spaces and the “we”, about the city and the individual(s). It could be a place where you find beauty, poetry, art.

Man created (and live in) the city in his own likeness.


Technical notes
Digital photography, taken in 2010, Séoul, Busan, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Montréal.

Contact
am@klotzekstudio.com

 

STEPHEN F SHERMAN: THE HIGH LINE

 

STEPHEN F SHERMAN: THE HIGH LINE

in scopio Magazine, Aboveground: city

The High Line Project began in 2006 and grew out of my familiarity with the Promenade Plante in Paris, where the same idea was put into being and was finished in 2000.  I started photographing the project before construction began, and have been photographing it since then.  What had once been an area of quiet isolation and a certain feral splendor, has been reborn in a neighborhood that has undergone remarkably rapid transformation, even by New York standards.

These ten pictures give a sense of past, present and future of this project, and this area of New York City.

Technical notes
The photographs are all high resolution digital (approx. 275 MB) and taken between 2006 and 2010.  Existing prints are archival pigment ink.

Contact
sfsherman@mac.com

 

MACIEJ GRUSZECKI: CITY LIMITED BY AIR AND COLD

 

MACIEJ GRUSZECKI: CITY LIMITED BY AIR AND COLD

scopio aboveground: city (h.mention)

These photographs are -in a way- the simples of all: it all just was there, on just one of wet winter days on one of these large concrete districts in a large city in Poland. nothing more, really. But to answer why did I take these photographs is to tell about what do I look for when taking photographs in general.

I was long thinking about that, and I think there are two main elements. one are contradictions, contrasts, oppositions.. of many many kinds. the other and more important is life. But in an indirect way -I am looking for signs of life where it is not obviously apparent, where it may not be visible at all in the first sight.

Places like this are very little inspiring or lively (they have been built all over central and eastern europe, mainly throughout the 60s, 70s and continue to expand today in slightly different shapes and materials). Yet thousands of people live in these concrete fields. There have been adjusted, sometimes in quite primitive ways, to serve many of the needs of their inhabitants. In addition to this days like this, February, on the edge of freezing temperatures, when snow mixes with rain and not the slightest traces of sunshine are visible are the least pleasant of all in the entire year. Yet the son did manage to drag his dad out to sleigh, the lady took her dog for a walk. The empty playgrounds seem not that empty. Life where and when one would not choose to live it.

The series 'Limited by Air and Cold' was taken in February 2009 in Ursynow, a large 70s/80s/90s district of Warsaw, filled with concrete blocks of flats on a typical wet and cold Polish winter day.

Technical notes:
All photographs were taken in Warsaw, Poland, in February 2009 using a medium format 6x6cm Rolleiflex 6008 camera on Ilford PAN F+ ISO50 negative; scans from negatives.

Contact
contact@maciejgruszecki.com

 

POL VILADOMS: DRESSING

 

POL VILADOMS: DRESSING

Synopsis

The project shows a city built between the 60s and the 70s characterized by a homogeneous architecture with a pyramidal shape and a decorative skin.


‘Dressing’ focuses in a concrete typology of aboveground constructions: summer buildings. Housing developments that grow next to the seashore with the purpose of accommodating hundreds of tourists only few months a year.

This collection of buildings share the same feature: they are covered by a skin, mainly decorative, based on geometrical patterns typical of summer fabrics. None of these “dressings” responds to a structural function. They are merely ornaments.

I present a group of diptychs in which one picture constitutes the creation pattern and the other the finished model.

Completely disassociated from the urban fabric that surrounds them, all these buildings live together one next to the other like colorful dresses do, hanging in the wardrobe, waiting for summer days.

Technical notes
HASSELBLAD 500CM camera with KODAK EKTAR 100 film

Contact
info@polviladoms.com

 

ALEKSANDRA WOJCIK: SOUND OF EMPTINESS

 

scopio aboveground: territory

'The Sound of Emptiness' project isn't only a story about a particular place in London. It is also my own journey through the shadows of the city, night and fear. Buildings sites from everyday places seem to turn into landscapes from other planets at night. I was fascinated by the artificial land created by humans and their machines. During the long exposures I was experiencing, meditating and observing the land. There was a strong sense of alienation and emptiness. I wanted to see and capture that place in my own way. I didn't have a final concept of my work. Every time I went there, I wanted to describe the place, how it looked like. Ever night I found something new about it, something that hadn't been said before. I became more focused on the detail, more aware of the quality of light and shape of the land. I kept my distance and shot in a wider view to underline the sense of the location and at the same time I came closer focusing on almost abstract shapes. I was fascinated by the strange forms which we are passing by every day without noticing them. The rubble and wired machines placed next to the gravel or cement factories reflected by the halogen lamps from the posts turn to beautiful creations and amazing objects. They are the main subject of my work, with the big city behind them in the background. Places which nobody wants to visit, empty and scary. The wasteland , where I could just hear the boat passing, or builders working on the other side while silent in my thoughts. Waiting so long for the image makes you think a lot about the location. It is almost like a dialogue, a meditation, a magical process of understanding the wind and light, the smell of the place as time passes."


Technical notes:

Mamiya RB 6X7 medium format
Kodak 160 iso colour film
long exposures (up to 50 minutes)
location: North Greenwich London
2010/2011


Contact
ola.wojcik@yahoo.co.uk


This project was short-listed for Sony Professional Awards – fine art/ landscape category and exhibited at Somerset House at the Sony Professional Awards Show May 2011.

 

TANGRE LAURA: OUTER-URBAN FOREST

 

Suburbs area, exactly forests, where you can play, camp, where you can walk for a while. Objects, things used by people strew the area. This serie has been made from august to december 2010.

The photographies are made by an argentic camera (middle size) and a digital reflex camera. I went to the suburb of the buid-up area, to photograph average forests, camping ground, paint-ball area... used by the surroundings inhabitants. This places are strewed by objects, useful or not, but they are a part of the landscape. This places are transitionals, waiting to be used. The square size of the photographies allows me to emphasize this elements ‘in plus’ that are in the landscapes. Winter season makes good conditions to go deep in this work, because the nature is naked, so you can see easily the ‘’traks’’ of the humans.

Technical elements
The pictures are digital and argentic, and the color paper print will be make in a professional laboratory, then stick on a hard support.

Contact
laura.tangre@gmail.com

 

CHRISTOS KOUKELIS: THE STATE OF THINGS

 

CHRISTOS KOUKELIS: THE STATE OF THINGS

Christos Koukelis' photographic series 'The State of Things' could be described as urban landscapes.

These photographs are result of Christos' extreme precision and fascination with the environment of modern metropolis, a technologically advanced and perfectly controlled built environment. In these photos the viewer can recognize spaces and social  activities of everyday city life. 

For this series Christos has selected an unemotional approach to his subject, he place his lens high above or opposite big areas where human influence has achieved an almost finished form, showing the technology, efficiency, scale and energy of the modern city. The city as it is now, or the newly rising global city.  

Christos' production employs the latest digital technology to capture and refine the modern and primarily urban environment.  The large scale prints (100x150cm) enable the viewer to observe in fine detail objects and scenes of everyday life that exist seamlessly spliced together in carefully ordered spaces.

The state of things

During the past century, the meaning of art shifted from the idea of continuity, of Reason, of the Aristotelian mimetic tautology, to the capability of shattering – in the personal point of view – the given, as a minimum prerequisite for our freedom. The forcing power of the inherited experience was offset by the insight of things to come. Insight and image became valid realities, with art examining   its former oracular - or magical – power.

Since then, the handling of the “visual machine” seems to have changed. It seems that the very ways we realise the visual environment have changed – especially its visual stimuli that come upon us in the form of organized and processed information.

Christos Koukelis' images follow this new relationship of the visual world with its processed codification. His hegemonic metropolis has the form and feel of an electronic circuit. It is the organized representation of an organized optical stimulus, the spectacular representation of the state of things.Text by Costas Goudis. 

About the photographer: 

Christos Koukelis was born in Athens, Greece. He studied photography at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens (TEI) and awarded a Master's degree in Image and Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK. 

He is a London-based photographer specialised in architecture and built environment. Since 2005, he has been working for a wide range of clients in London and throughout the UK.

Christos has exhibited his personal work in numerous group and solo exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Greece, Japan and the USA. He has won several photography awards and many of his photographs are part of the permanent collections of the Thesaloniki Museum of Photography in Greece and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. 

Contacts
chkoukelis@yahoo.gr

www.christoskoukelis.com

This project has been shot in London and Birmingham, United Kingdom from 2008 to 2010. 

 

CLÉRIO AUGUSTO BACK: NATURALMENTE URBANO

 

aboveground: architecture

Série Fotográfica “Naturalmente Urbano” do fotógrafo brasileiro Clério Back, Paranaense de 25 anos.

Nessa série composta de 8 imagens em cor, realizadas com a técnica de dupla exposição, o fotógrafo retrata imagens de uma cidade relacionando elementos claramente urbanos em contraponto a elementos naturais, ambos pertencentes ao cenário dessa cidade. Dessa forma as imagens circulam entre o figurativo e abstrato instigando a reflexão sobre como percebemos as cidades que vivemos na atualidade.

A proposta da série “Naturalmente Urbano”é definir um retrato de pontos urbanos em uma cidade comum, onde é possível perceber em uma imagem o contraste e ao mesmo tempo as similaridades entre o concreto (parte constitutiva dos prédios e elementos simbolos do desenvolvimento urbano) em contraponto ao natural (elementos que permanecem presentes no cotidiano das cidades, apesar de estarem diminuindo. A intenção é criar uma interação visual entre esses elementos por meio de uma representação visual, possibilitada pelo uso da técnica de dupla exposição.

No caso da série, “Naturalmente Urbano”, opta-se em fragmentar elementos característicos e presentes em um ambiente urbano. Por outro lado pode-se notar a representação de elementos que delimitam a natureza (o ambiente natural) dentro do contexto urbano. A idéia principal em cada imagem é unir esses fragmentos (urbanos e naturais) em um mesmo frame (captura) através da técnica de dupla exposição de maneira que a imagem final torne-se menos figurativa, tonando esses elementos nãp tão fáceis de serem percebidos como normalmente são vistos no dia-a-dia. Por outro lado é possível perceber que essa série possui relações com o conceito de volume, sendo que em grande parte das imagens há a representação de profundidade e perspectiva (como no caso dos prédios). O uso da dupla exposição torna as formas dos elementos registrados mais abstratas, mas ainda assim é possível perceber como o uso da composição e organização dos elementos na imagem (cores, formas, primeiro plano, fundo).

Por fim essa série busca favorecer uma reflexão sobre a realidade urbana atual, através do uso da contraposição de dois elementos opostos. Para que seja possível compreender e pensar a respeito do espaço urbano que vivemos e como interagimos com ele.


Technical notes
Técnica de Dupla  Exposição Fotográfica Cor
Tam. 30X40cm

 

RICHARD CHIVERS: ARCHITECTURE OF URBAN DISCORD

 

RICHARD CHIVERS: ARCHITECTURE OF URBAN DISCORD

in scopio Magazine, Aboveground: city

The work in Architecture of Urban Discord is an investigation of the Rowner housing estate in Gosport, Portsmouth, England, which has fallen into decline and is now due for regeneration. The estate fell into decline during the 1980s and 90s through a lack of investment. Drug problems and anti social behavior resulted in the material and social fabric of the area collapsing, leading some commentators to label it the Worst Estate in the South East of England. Investigating this marginalized space I am interested in exploring ideas of displacement and a collapse of a sense of community or sense of place. The photographs show rows of boarded up houses, ruins that represent the demise of certain social ideologies, here history has been suspended, waiting for the next phase of urban design to take shape.

Contact
richard@rchivers.co.uk

 

XAVIER DELORY: URBAN FORMS 2010 - 2013

 
 

XAVIER DELORY: URBAN FORMS 2010 - 2013


scopio aboveground: city (h. mention)

The aim of this work (in progress) is to study the recurrent characteristics of modern cities, with Brussels as first field of research. This work will comprise several chapters: ‘Bare d'îlot’ (a reflection about the urban block, the framework of the historic city, its break-up and its replacement by residential and office towers), ‘Dom-ino’ (this name is a wink at ‘Le Corbusiers’ concept. Critic of a functionnal and profitable architecture, symbol of vanity and fragility), ‘Façade libre’ (a reflection about façadism, the ‘Disneyland’ city),…

Technical notes:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II (Shift Lenses)
Lambda print mounted on aluminium thickness 1 mm (size +- 105*70cm)


Contact:
info@xavierdelory.be

 

ANDRZEJ MACIEJEWSKI: AFTER NOTMAN

 

ANDRZEJ MACIEJEWSKI: AFTER NOTMAN

scopio aboveground: city (winner)

"After Notman" is a re-photographic project. I have chosen thirty four of iconic19th century Montreal (Canada) views taken by William Notman and I photographed the same places again, one hundred years later (1999-2001), creating true replicas of the original pictures by use of exactly the same vantage point and capturing the same moment of the year and time of the day in order to reproduce the same angle of light and shadow. This is why the images should be displayed in pairs, an old photograph by Notman Studio together with my re-photograph. The project was exibited in the McCord Museum of Canadian History, in Montreal, in 2004. The exhibition then travelled to several other venues and in 2010 was presented as an outdoor exhibition at one of the main streets of Montreal. It has been included in the McCord Museum's "Keys to History" permanent online program, under the title "Urban life through two lenses". It has also been placed in the Virtual Museum of Canada. The book "After Notman:Montreal Views-A Century Apart" was published by Firefly in 2003, and made the "Globe and Mail" bestsellers list for several weeks. There is a hope that the book will be re-published in 2011. 

Images – titles list:
01. Montreal Harbour, Looking East from the Archeological Museum
William Notman, 1884 / Andrzej Maciejewski, 2000 
02. Looking North-West from Notre-Dame Church, Montreal, QC
William Notman, 1872 /Andrzej Maciejewski, 1999
03. View from Notre Dame Church Looking East, Montreal, QC
William Notman, 1863 / Andrzej Maciejewski, 2000
04. Jacques Cartier Square, Montreal, QC
William Notman, ca 1890 / Andrzej Maciejewski, 2001
05. The Windsor Hotel and Place du Canada, Montreal, QC
William Notman, 1897 / Andrzej Maciejewski, 1999


Contact
am@klotzekstudio.com

 

MATAN ASHENAZY: DAILY RANGE

 

MATAN ASHENAZY: DAILY RANGE

scopio aboveground: territory

This body of work includes color photographs done in Israel with an 8x10/4x5 plate camera between 2009-2012. The images deal with confined space within the natural environment aesthetically, politically and construct wise. A feeling of being activated and controlled around the Israeli space and laws as a citizen drove me to photograph objects and views that function as backgrounds, looking at the mundane and everyday within this unique and rudimentary landscape. 
Depicting the effects of human behavior in the landscape, and by observing outside of the 'event', the photographs isolate the objects from the narrative of time, undermining context and scale. These images are made in the void that exists between military and civilian life. These places are found both in the cities and the countryside, and the photographs investigate how the boundaries between civilian and military have become blurred.
The fragile landscape and the brutalist architecture create a monotone landscape within what was a vibrant place. The use of ecru' - beige colors indicate ways of looking and searching monochrome grey within color photography, as a tool for representing these fictionalized environments and using photography as a medium to give place for thought.
Ultimately the devices being used in Israel are being used all around the world to less or greater degree and it is this political use of landscape that interests me and is currently the theme of my work. Although the work depicts a specific place, the research is about policing landscapes and controlling spaces everywhere.


Contact
matanashkenazy@gmail.com

 

JOSÉ FILIPE CASTRO DOS SANTOS: ESPAÇOS VAZIOS

 

JOSÉ FILIPE CASTRO DOS SANTOS: ESPAÇOS VAZIOS

scopio aboveground: city

Espaços Vazios é um projecto que pretende desconstruir o conceito de “vazio” aliado ao espaço. O que poderá ser encontrado no “vazio” e o que leva o Homem a definir algo como sendo “vazio” e não preenchido? Cheio? (Cheio de nada?).
Antes de mais, é primordial definir o conceito de vazio. Como tal, no dicionário poderemos encontrar variadíssimas formas de o compreender sendo a definição mais comum: 

vazio - adjectivo vazio - espaço que não possui nada no seu interior.

Mas até que ponto é exacta esta definição? Perceber o espaço será sempre o primeiro começo para encontrar algo que o defina. Ou seja, sempre que nos encontramos num determinado local temos a necessidade de o compreender, de o sentir, de o assimilar de forma a que consigamos conectar com o meio que nos envolve. Mas a sua percepção ocorre sempre através de vários elementos, normalmente elementos que nos estimulam visualmente, como as próprias pessoas que circulam neles, candeeiros de rua, animais, bancos, nuvens de poeiras, sombras… e tantos outros elementos que dele poderão fazer parte. Ou seja, a percepção que normalmente nós identificamos num determinado espaço passa pela absorção dos vários elementos que dele fazem parte, sendo eles elementos temporários ou permanentes, como tal, a relação que temos com o espaço parte sempre dos elementos que o constituem sendo que primeiro temos acesso aos elementos que o constituem e, só depois, é que temos acesso ao espaço.
Contudo, para tal acesso, é sempre necessário entrar no espaço através de um processo de abstracção. Isto é, entrar nele e desobstruir os elementos que ele contém para ter, por fim, uma concepção clara do que ele realmente é.
Se bem que, é importante referir, que o espaço é sempre algo definido por características de distância e de localização: onde ele se encontra, como lá chegar, e, finalmente, quando lá nos encontramos. Portanto, o espaço como sendo algo obtido pela abstracção dos elementos que ele contém e, importante, pela forma de como ele se encontra, isto porque, ele encontra-se sempre definido por certos limites físicos que nos levam a construir e a delimitá-lo. Para tal, temos, como já foi referido, a percepção do espaço pela sua abstracção e pela captação dos sentidos sobre o mesmo. Sendo que para desenvolver tais capacidades é necessário aliar todas as percepções que obtivemos sobre o mesmo e, após tal, conjugá-las através do raciocínio inclusive que este raciocínio partirá sempre de uma observação/percepção/abstracção pessoal e única, logo significa que todos os humanos adquirem diferentes resultados devido à forma de como cada um percepciona aquilo que o rodeia (sendo que factores emocionais, físicos e psicológicos irão influenciar o raciocínio de cada um).
O espaço é, por fim, algo de carácter indestrutível. Existe para que algo exista sobre ele na mesma medida em que se afirma que se algo não possuir o seu espaço para se situar é porque afinal não existe. Como tal, é sobre esta ideia (“abstracta”) do espaço que existe e não-existe que resiste o vazio. O vazio como sendo o expoente máximo da existência do nada e da própria existência do espaço. Isto é, pela necessidade que temos em retirar os elementos que “vivem” sobre o espaço de forma a chegarmos até ele. Logo, as pessoas que “vivem” sobre os espaços, os candeeiros de rua, animais, bancos, nuvens de poeiras, sombras… serão sempre elementos que, efémeros, que criam o meio onde se encontram… que mais tarde darão lugar a outros elementos que, consecutivamente, irão criar novas formas de espaço e, como resultado, uma nova perspectiva de vazio. Isto, sempre, após a abstracção de tudo o que o espaço contém, inclusive nós, humanos, que nos desprovemos de identidade, de forma… para dar lugar ao vazio.
Para a representação do projecto optei por fotografar, com uma câmara digital, fachadas de edifícios: procurando linhas rectas, jogos de sombras, geométricas e simétricas de forma a evidenciar o lado mecânico, pouco personalizado e orgânico das construções. Após tal, projectei as imagens sobre uma tela e coloquei pessoas em frente dessa mesma projecção para a construção das imagens finais.
As imagens finais, referentes ao projecto, explicam-se pela forma de como as fachadas dos edifícios limitam o espaço que nos rodeia e pela forma efémera que eles próprios representam. Assim como as próprias pessoas que neles se encontram, passam, cruzam… também elas efémeras no espaço… as suas sombras coladas às limitações do espaço e a ausência de identidade projecta o vazio que pretendo alcançar: a desconstrução daquilo que vemos e alcançar a forma mais singular e básica - o espaço - e só aí nos deparamos com o vazio.
Em Espaços Vazios terei que salientar que este projecto está sustentado pela abordagem a diferentes tipos de fachadas. Isto porque as fachadas (quer de prédios, edifícios, casas…) representam um limite entre algo. Algo esse, o espaço e, simultaneamente, o próprio vazio que reside nele. 
Havemos sempre de encontrar diferentes formas de estado do próprio espaço, isto porque os limites que o definem podem alterar-se, consecutivamente, o vazio que nele reside.
Contudo, para fazer tais observações, é necessário existir diferentes processos sendo um primeiro sensorial (a captação do espaço através dos sentidos) e um segundo de raciocínio. Este processo resulta na concepção que atribuímos a um determinado local, espaço e, obviamente, do vazio existente nele. Mas, o vazio, encontra-se pela absorção de todos os elementos que residem num determinado local sendo elementos temporários (humanos, poeiras, fumos, sombras…) ou permanentes (bancos, estátuas…).



Technical Notes
Fotografia Analógica - slides
Fotografia Digital (cores)
PRAKTICA - MTL 5 
Objectivas: 50mm - f:1.8 | 200mm - f:3.5
CANON EOS - 400D
Objectiva: 18-55mm f:5.6

Contact
josesantosfotografia@hotmail.com