DOZEN OF BULLS

DOZEN OF BULLS

BY BERBER THEUNISSEN

Berber Theunissen (Netherlands, 1989) is graduated (Cum Laude) from the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam. For her graduation series ‘Vagabond’ she explored how one lives without a permanent home, and how it feels to wander between friends and family with few possesions. Berber chooses to capture those situations that she little grasp of. Through photography, she creates her own holdfast to view her own life more objectively. She has exhibited her work in several solo and in group exhibitions in the Netherlands, and has had work published in international magazines and websites. Works and lives in Amsterdam.

synopsis

After ‘Vagabond’ she created ‘Dozen of Bulls’ during a tour with her grandfather through Iceland. “Fall 2013 me and my granddad went to Iceland. Me 24, him 75, differentiated by 51 years of life-experience. While I was figuring out how to live my life and what choices to make. Granddad was looking back on the choices he made in life and the ‘growth’ between then and now. We had never been this close...” Berber’s work was selected by Foam as a part of the exhibition ‘Photo Town’ in Felix&Foam, as well being selected for the ‘New Dutch Photography Talent’ in Gup Gallery Amsterdam.

editor´s note

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

DOLOMITES - N46 36 47 E12 9 47

DOLOMITES - N46 36 47 E12 9 47

BY ANDREA ALESSIO

Andrea Alessio (Venice, 1966) lives and works between Treviso and Venice. He studied Literature and Cinema at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice and afterwards continued studying photography with authors like Italo Zannier, Paolo Costantini, Gabriele Basilico, Jessica Backhaus, Guido Guidi, Silvia Camporesi, Joakim Eskildsen, Machiel Botman, Marco Zanta, Todd Hido, Pino Musi, Mark Steinmetz, Jason Fulford, Lucas Foglia.

His work has been exhibited, among others, by the gallery Il Diaframma for its 25th anniversary, by the Contemporary Art Museum in Bergamo and the Science Museum in Milan and more recently by private galleries in New York, San Francisco, Milano, Venice, Philadelphia, ecc. Andrea Alessio owns and runs a photographic studio (www.varianti.it). After a pause in his artistic career, he restarted focusing on more personal work in 2011.

synopsis

"ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN"

I would like to introduce this new series of photos by Andrea Alessio dedicated to the Dolomites by appealing to axiom that photography is a philosophical practice. His exercise allows us competing critically with the exotic, or with what exists outside us. It is not only a technical ability, but also a thought instrument that we can apply to the reality and to our reflection training-ground. Consequently, the true discovery is not in the visible imagination we create, but in what it reveals to us of our mind.

The journey begun during the recent years by Andrea Alessio through his own “where”, coinciding approximately with that geographic region called Veneto, satisfies first of all this need to realize, to direct the mind in such a way to perceive better what is important for us. In this sense the journey is a re-birth path that can just start nearby, from what we do not see or we do not want to see anymore. In this sense, Andrea Alessio’s choice to start the re-discovery of his own ‘territory’ through the Christmas decorations and their unsuspectable shining a light in the dark of the most common places is brilliant. His patient night visions derive from this need to shine a light on his own experiences.

The following stages of this journey lead us from the Venetian plain with its factories and scattered houses, to the most solitary mountain landscapes, in which the relationship between solids and voids, between what is and what is not, is sharper and more marked in the photography, also for the use of black and white. In the infinite snows of Misurina, collected in the ‘Apollo 19’ album, in which Andrea Alessio sketches the features of a Martian space deceiving the reason by widening the borders; then in the ‘Vajont’, where he tries his “reconstruction”, by investigating not so much for the remains of the memory as the sensations before time, before that dramatic moment, October 9th, 1963, at 10.39 PM, sweeping away almost 2,000 people during the sleep.

The photographer reminds us for a moment, that the mountain, a symbol of union between sky and earth, does not always aid the awareness by the human being of his position in the universe.

Finally the Dolomites. The story highlights another basic element of the poetic view by Andrea Alessio. The distance or what I would call more philosophically the right measure. It becomes the interpretation necessary to open the project and to explain the relationship with the context. The author looks for an optimal scale to bring the mountain closer to its possible dimensions. Somehow, you perceive the desire to hide any reference from the observer. The message is clear: the mountain does not exist, just what we are able to grasp of it exists. Of course, the façade of the Dolomite peaks is hard, compact and impenetrable. This rock is so much that it seems to us that we may have it between the teeth and chew it. However, sooner or later, the details appear on the surface. A fir challenging the high altitude, a pole driven in the stone, a child climbing on his hands. Suddenly this uniform mass starts slowly to distinguish itself, to reveal its life, as if it were a projection of our same existence. As we gain confidence, it seems to us almost that we may own it. So, it can even happen that we joke by mistaking the face of one of these Dolomites for the profile of Garibaldi, Verdi or Karl Marx. This is of little importance. What is important is the effort taking us there. In all these works you breathe a great ground silence, necessary to think and to obtain suggestions from the inner whispers. It seems to me that Andrea Alessio has stopped to pursue the past. All his meetings with his “where” gives shape to a new personal interpretation. Light, space and time are words that the author makes vibrate to call the definition into question and to look for a meaning out of the pure objectivity. Now there is nothing we can do but wait for his descent from the mountain towards the sea.

Steve Bisson (Asolo, October 13, 2014)

CÁ ENTRE NÓS

CÁ ENTRE NÓS

BY JOSÉ SILVA PINTO

José Silva Pinto is an Angolan photographer with a scientific background, whose life leads him initially to work in various areas, but who, at some point, devoted himself entirely to his passion: photography.

A recognised author who has been published in the most prestigious institutional publications of its country, he already has several exhibitions, both in Angola and abroad. His curriculum lists various photography exhibitions, as "Olhares" held in 2003 at the Casino do Hotel Marinha, in Luanda;  “Deambulações" in 2004, at Bar Pub Desigual, in Luanda; "Meet the arts of Angola" in 2005, at the Embassy of Angola in Tokyo, Japan; " Dipanda forever" in 2006, in the collective exhibition of Luanda Triennale and the solo exhibition in Seoul , South Korea, in 2007, at the invitation of a representative office of Angola.

It is significant to refer his latest publication – Cá Entre Nós José Silva Pinto - a book describing all the journey of the photographer, from the province of Cabinda to Namibe, Cunene and Cuando - Cubango, showing the locations from north to south of Angola that José Silva Pinto travelled between 2005 and 2011.

The photographic work of Jose Silva Pinto gives us a perspective that differs considerably from the stereotyped imagery of Angola, thus helps to create a more comprehensive idea about this great country of the African continent. His images allow a deeper analysis about Angola since they communicate, through the different situations and spaces portrayed, “another look” and understanding, showing to us also the positive human aspects, which are common to all cultures and people.

Jose Silva Pinto wholehearted and single out viewpoint about his country, and the genuine way he captures emotions and moments of life, immediately conquer our interest. The documentary and personal nature of his work is the result of the ability of Jose Silva Pinto to relate authentically with Angola and its people, thus enabling him, as he says, to be more constructive and more participatory in his work, but at the same time to draw attention to the problems we all have a responsibility not to ignore.

This work will be shown over the coming months, simulating the sensation of travel and discovery, intended by the author.

1st stage: Discovering Cunene, Cuando-Cubango and Bié.

Written by Pedro Leão Neto

ANGOLA - STREET VIEWS

ANGOLA - STREET VIEWS

BY GRAEME WILLIAMS

My work is housed in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian (USA) and Duke University (USA), The South African National Gallery and The University of Cape Town.

I have staged solo exhibitions in Johannesburg, New York, London and Paris and have contributed to many combined exhibitions on contemporary South African photography; including the 2011 Figures and Fictions exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the 2014 Apartheid and After exhibition at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam.

During 2013 I was awarded the POPCAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography as well as the Ernest Cole Book Award.

URL
https://graemewilliams.co.za/

Synopsis

Google Street View has become one of the most utilized sources of visual information and documentation in current day life. A mechanical camera records views of our planet’s streets at random moments in time. The views are snapped as they happen, with no consideration, for instance, of aesthetics or historical significance. Furthermore, the presence or absence of people within the frame is irrelevant. Google Street View provides us with a largely non-subjective document of our global village.

Doug Richard in his 2012 book, A New American Picture, makes a powerful statement about economic disparities and the neglect of certain segments of American society. His careful selection of screen fragments from the constant stream of dispassionate street views, produced a stark view of the social contrasts within his country. Richard’s anti-decisive moments are especially poignant because of the knowledge that the original source of these images (the Google camera), is both mechanical and perfunctory. His brilliant selection, in contrast, is extremely personal and subjective – the combination a creative and powerful comment on image-making and the state of his nation.

Angola, a large country on the south-west coast of Africa, also has vast disparities in wealth, but in contrast to America the majority of the population live in a state of dire poverty. Google has only captured a few streets within the richest waterfront areas of Luanda, the capital city. The sprawling slums remain undocumented. The lack of street view coverage of particular areas of the world highlights the degree to which social and economic disparities occur on a global scale; the Google street view coverage is influenced by the potential number of online users.

This essay, Angola: Street Views explores one of the overlooked corners of the world. Employing the pared-down aesthetic of the automated street camera as well as chance juxtapositions captured in Rickard’s book, these drive-by snapshots provide inescapable facts and insights into the neglected lives of many Angolans. The photographs were taken from a moving vehicle, resulting in accidental associations of people, vehicles and landscapes. The unstructured approach and loose framing results in images that resemble Google street views, however they lack any online functionality. Rather, their bland appearance, devoid of any postcard-type aesthetic, serves to communicate and amplify the social and economic poverty that pervades the city.

Images’ captions:
Angola – Street Views

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.

BREENDONK

BREENDONK

BY CEDRIC LEFEBVRE

Cedric Lefebvre is a photographer based in Brussels, Belgium. He is inspired by his training as a psychologist to explore the links between society, culture and identity. His photography has been exhibited in galleries across Europe and featured in international photography publications.

synopsis

Belgium has not been spared by the horror of Nazism and its concentration camps.
The fortress of Breendonk is a downright moving and striking symbol that perpetuates the memory of the suffering, the torture and the death of so many victims.  Even if only a dot on the gruesome map of concentration camps, it witnessed the same desire to annihilate the individual, which shared the same objective of enslaving and negating the human person. This serie of photographs has been commissioned by 198 Contemporary Arts Gallery, in London for a project examining the relationship between crime and punishment in a political historical, ethical, social and psychological context.
 

editor's note

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

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16 NOVES DE FOTOGRAFIAS

16 NOVES DE FOTOGRAFIAS

BY DINIS SANTOS

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

Synopsis

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

Editor´s note

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

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD

BY JM RAMÍREZ-SUASSI

JM Ramírez-Suassi (1970) was born in Mallorca (Spain) and now lives and works in Madrid. His photographs, which at first sight appears to fit seamlessly into the great nowhere, involve many visits to the same landscapes to observe the change year after year.  His work occupies an ambiguous position somewhere between portraiture and social landscape. Peripheries and Wrong side of the road is an ongoing series documenting the outskirts of the city Madrid. Nonetheless, recent work (Eden or The Days of the Barber’s Winding Sheet) also emphasizes seemingly casual shots of his family and friends.
JM Ramírez-Suassi exhibited his artwork in Europe and USA. Is a self-taught.

synopsis

I always return to the same places over and over again, until I get used to a kind of cycle of illusion, disenchantment and recidivism in which I am capable to understand myself through the images captured.

editor's note

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

WE’VE BEEN FIGHTING OVER ROTTEN POTATOES

WE’VE BEEN FIGHTING OVER ROTTEN POTATOES

BY MARIA BEGASSE

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

synopsis

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

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

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

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

editor's note

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

WALKS

WALKS

BY MARTIN BRINK

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

synopsis

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

editor's note

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

VARIATIONS

VARIATIONS

BY MELANIE JAYNE TAYLOR

“In reaching back to origins to recollect lost fragments of our experience, memory makes use whole once more by re affirming out connection with the past" 1

Melanie Jayne Taylor was born in Melbourne, Australia, grew up in Bangkok, Thailand and works between both locations. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts (2010) from RMIT University, Melbourne.

Melanie Jayne Taylor’s practice explores the use of photography as a site for ordering and archiving memory. She works with text components, video and installation strategies to display her extensive personal photographic archive; within these images she investigates the meanings of memory, loss, longing, absence and the complexity of time.
Her recent work concentrates on systems and strategies of compilation and cataloguing as a means of managing the ever growing body of material in her archive.
Melanie has exhibited her work extensively in Australia and internationally. She has been awarded grants from Australia Council for the Arts, Australia-Thailand Institute, Victorian Multicultural Commission and RMIT University and residencies in Finland, France, Italy, Spain and Thailand.
Melanie is co-founder of The Australian Thai Artist Interchange (ATAI), a cross cultural exchange organisation. She is also part of the collectives Concrete Post and Eye Collective.

synopsis

Barcelona is a city in a continual state of transition; urban regeneration has been a consistent and widely celebrate theme here; from the 19th century ‘l’Eixample’ extension plan to the remodelling of the city for the 1992 Olympic Games and to the modern day revamping projects such as in the district of Glòries. The city itself is like an artefact, built up as a series of complex layers that are a residue of historical, socio-political and economic factors. The urban landscape of Barcelona is clearly a product of its past and its present and the architecture here reflects the meeting between the old and the new.

As I wander through the streets of Barcelona, intent on ‘being present’, I find myself highly attuned to this state of transience that governs the city.  Piles of building rubble laying out on the sidewalk, scaffolding in the distance or along the skyline, exterior restoration, interior renovations, shifting facades and architectural details…The picturing of these temporary structures, changing landscapes and renovation sites are an overt visual display of the lifecycle of the city as it grows, expands and changes form. 

My own past lingers obscurely before me – overlapping with elements of my present in different variations. The urban fabric of this city is like a vessel for me to construct and re-construct my own past memories using the building sites depicted in the imagery as a metaphor for notions of transience, impermanence and the fragmentary experience of memory over time. 

For Variations [Re-orientation], I’ve combined these new photographs with older imagery from my archive of a similar subject matter, to create visually dramatic and evocative compositions. This older material is predominantly sourced from my recent encounters in Bangkok and Phenom Penh – two cities that are also in a state of continual urban development. Playful relationships between colour and geometry become navigation points, created through careful attention to the arrangement, organisation and installation of the imagery. By overlapping image fragments from the past onto the present experience, the project investigate notions of memory, presentness, fragility, our relationship to place,  and the complexity of time.

1 Freud, ‘Moses and Monotheism’ cited by Patrick Hutton, ‘Chapter seven: Foucault, Freud, and the Technologies of the Self’ in ‘Technologies of the self – A seminar with Michael Foucault’, Tavistock Publications, Great Britain, 1988.

REGAINED PARADISE

REGAINED PARADISE

BY FRANKY VERDICKT

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

synopsis

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

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

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

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

THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF A BRITISH NEW TOWN

THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF A BRITISH NEW TOWN

BY KERIM AYTAC

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

synopsis

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

editor's note

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

THE MEAT WE EAT

THE MEAT WE EAT

BY ANKI GRØTHE

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

More images of the project  click

About the author

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

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