WITH BAS PRINCEN: DESIRE

WITH BAS PRINCEN: DESIRE 

BY SUSANA VENTURA

We present an informal exchange of ideas about Bas Princen’s photographs resulting from several conversations. It is divided into three chapters: a first about desire or what makes an image come into being, a second dedicated to composition or about the photographs as autonomous lived spaces and works of art and then a third and last chapter about the instruments and the techniques as modes of connection between the photographer, the camera, the reality and the real that the photograph creates and presents.

SV: A first and basic question: your main education is in architecture (you’ve graduated from the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam), but your main occupation is photography and architectural photography in particular. What drove you into photogra- phy and how did architecture play a role?

BAS: To me it’s not about document at all. It’s about something completely different even though things might look very straightforward that I photograph or very banal how they are photographed, that’s not the intention...

SV: So, what drove you into photography or when did you decided to become a photog- rapher instead of an architect?

BAS: You don’t decide it. This is the funny thing, of course.That’s something that happens. But you could say that there were some ingredients that made it happen. When I was studying at The Design Academy at the time I was there it was called Academy for Industrial Design, I was there or I went there in order to start to design things – well, that was the intention...

SV: But you are still designing things...

BAS: Not really, not anymore, but for instance, when I am teaching, I am teaching architecture, and not photography, so there is quite a lot... I know quite a lot about it, I follow it up, I know what is going on in the world of design and architecture more in architecture than in design – and somehow I use that in my photography, but I don’t practice anymore.  It’s a different occupation and you need to have other different skills and sensibilities.

SV: Yes, but what I was saying is that you are still designing in the space of the photograph, because you’re designing, constructing and fabricating landscape and buildings in the space of the photograph. What lives in the space of a photograph of yours doesn’t exist exactly in reality. There are several techniques that allow you to play with the reality and that make a photograph a construction, a way of seeing things, of seeing light, of seeing volume, of seeing colour... In the end, you’re designing. In architecture, you deal also with light, volumes, colour, empty space, mass...

BAS: You could say that, in The Design Acad- emy, there were a couple of things that set it off, several ingredients of which one was a very strange course that was called – it was in the first year – it was called “Optical Grammar Studies”.

SV: It is quite unusual!

BAS: Yes, it’s quite unusual. It was a course in which you had to start to understand how to organize a piece of paper on which you had to add a certain amount of lines or points, in a way you had to reorganize it. It was super abstract, you never knew if you were doing it right or wrong, because basically it involved putting three dots or a hundred dots... And after a while, you intuitively apply certain rules to follow up one decision after the other. I don’t know if you understand what I am talk- ing about...

SV: Perfectly! It’s a very Bauhaus way of teaching!

WITH HÉLÈNE BINET: THE PURE SENSATION OF PHOTOGRAPHY PART II

WITH HÉLÈNE BINET: THE PURE SENSATION OF PHOTOGRAPHY PART II

BY SUSANA VENTURA

SV: Taking into account that you may always look at Peter Zumthor’s work with a given frame and an aperture in your mind, how would you describe its perception first as an inhabitant?

HB: It is difficult for me to be in a Zumthor’s building without thinking about my work. Even if I would like to be simply an inhabitant, there is a part of my mind that I cannot control completely, which is aware of the fact that I am a photographer. I think I cannot distinguish the approach of “Hélène Binet, the photographer” from the one of “Hélène Binet, the inhabitant”. In my first visit I like to be able to do something that is not related to my activity as a photographer. While you are doing this activity, there is another part of the brain perceiving information about the surroundings and, as a consequence, the soul of the building comes to you. The result of those perceptions is very valuable for the understanding of a place. But, of course, I also need to have a rational approach by looking at drawings or discussing issues with the architects.

SV: Peter Zumthor says that “we perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibility - a form of perception that works incredibly quickly”, because “we are capable of immediate appreciation, of a spontaneous emotional response, of rejecting things in a flash”. Still bearing in mind that you are an inhabitant of a Peter Zumthor’s work, how would you describe its impact on you?

HB: All the buildings I visited, I knew I was going to photograph them beforehand, so I could not just sit there and enjoy and feel the atmosphere completely. But I would say that to really understand a place I actually need time, because I do understand a lot through the light and the light is different on the surfaces or in the room in each and every second of the day. I am not able to pass judgement or express appreciation very quickly because I like to see the building as something alive that changes. I think the cycle of the day is very important to get closer to a building.

SV: Yes and your photographs are a reflection of that; as if light was their first material.

HB: Yes, we see the world because of the light and it is difficult to disentangle the complicated relationship between the light, the object that receives it and the surrounding atmosphere. The work of a photographer is to capture the light. If I am to photograph a space, I am not interested in one perfect image or one iconic image, but in the way the space responds to different lights and in analysing how each situ- ation creates a different world. If you have different lights, you have different pictures and you see that there is no single representation of something, one experience that you might say, “this is the building”.

SV: Then, you take a walk, as you say: as “an unconscious act of seeing”. Why is it “unconscious”? What do you think or believe that it is at stake when you wander around the place and the space?

HB: I don’t know exactly in which occasion I used the expression “unconscious act of seeing” but, of course, there are very different moments when you walk through space and it is about the approach I mentioned before, to do something, to allow, no to look in a rational way, but to be looked up by the building, let’s say. And then there is the walk when you walk from point A to point B and somehow what you see is unfolding. Every time you walk there is something appearing or disappearing and, then, by the end of the walk, you have seen many different situations. When you are at the end of the walk, at point B, you will be confronted with one view, one image, but you also remember all the other images and this moment of layering is very important for perception itself. The building is so complex as an experience. As you know, when you are in a space all your senses are involved in perception. All your senses are working: you can smell, you can be cold, you can move, you can hear, you can remember, you can imagine the plan of the building. It is very complex and a photograph is very simple. It is better not to compete with the complexity of the percep- tion of architecture. An image has to be simple and direct. It has to be able to create an atmosphere and to drown you in it and per- haps to remind you of something else.

SV: What is the role of desire in your work?

HB: What is the first reason to do the photo- graph? I think it is an interesting question and, somehow, it is the same for every artist, be it a musician or an artist, a photographer or an architect. At the end, maybe we are all quite romantic and there is a very strong relationship with the world that surrounds us, and we have the desire to identify ourselves with it and maybe to appropriate it. I mean, art and photography are a strong way to appropriate the world. In photography, you frame it and you control it and then it becomes yours. The desire to produce an image is about this tension between our feelings and landscape (or architecture, which is just another form of landscape).

SV: Is there any kind of previous knowledge about the work you are going to shoot, such as a conversation with Peter Zumthor about the ideas or emotions that have been pre- sent in the work from the beginning?

HB: When I work with an architect I try to look at the concept of his/ her work and also to understand his/ her sensibility. And I try

to understand the first reason for a concept, what is behind the initial idea but can still be perceived in a building. With Peter Zumthor, there is not a lot of verbal exchange. It is up to me to be perceptive and ready to capture what sort of photograph is appropriate for his work.

SV: What do you mean when you say you were only able to photograph the Thermal Baths of Vals after diving into the water?

HB: You have to become part of the building to fully photograph it. In that case, in the Thermal Baths, I see the water as one of the building materials. It is maybe light and stone and water. So, you cannot enter this building without swimming... It would be like not walking in the place and merely looking at it through a window. You need that full experience to be able to realise why he made some choices and, of course, it is also unique, because there is no other building typology where the material is something that you can feel in your body in the same way. Normally, you can touch it; see if it is comfortable or if it is cold... In that case, you can really be part of the building physically and that is quite unique, of course.

WITH HÉLÈNE BINET: THE PURE SENSATION OF PHOTOGRAPHY_PART II

WITH HÉLÈNE BINET: THE PURE SENSATION OF PHOTOGRAPHY_PART II

BY SUSANA VENTURA

SV: When Peter Zumthor explains his idea of “atmosphere”, he gives as an example the photographs that he loves and make him wonder about his ability to design places such as those represented in the photographs. He is looking for a kind of sensation represented in the photograph and we must be aware of the fact that he has never seen one of the buildings and that he is enchanted with a mood that he cannot find anymore on the other one. However, both examples make him desire and pursue those sensations he describes. In your opinion, can photography represent the feeling of an architectural work? Or does photography capture a sensation that does not belong to the architectural work, but lives merely in the plane of the photograph composition, even if that photograph is faithful to the architectural work? Or is it the same sensation, the feeling of belonging to the architectural work that passes through the photograph?

HB: The way I work, I am interested in sublimating the sensation that belongs to architecture. And that brings me to ask myself: Can photography represent a sensation? Yes. If not, it will be not photography. Of course, architecture photography can be seen as a very strict and hard discipline. Sometimes people ask me: “What do you do with photography?” and I answer: “Architecture”. And they say: “Oh!” They think it’s a very unemotional form of expression. But it isn’t. The reason I like to photograph architecture is because I feel that photographing spaces and objects is a way of telling stories that belong to a specific environment. I need them like a musician needs a score. Somehow the camera is a little like an instrument and architecture is the score. You may say that sounds and stories are always very subjective. The camera plays something but someone else has been writing it, has been putting the notes and the harmony together. We need this score... but I’m still doing the sounds, so, it’s a very tight relationship. I need the harmony that was written by somebody else and someone else needs my sensibility to put it together, so there’s no way they exist without each other. I mean, of course, architecture can be visited, but I’m talking about architecture photography. In architecture photography we need to be quite reduced and this is why I like details in B&W. I think Aristotle said “We hear better in the dark”. If our senses are reduced; if we only have one sense available, we may be very impressed, or very concentrated, or hear better.

SV: In the act of creation what allows you to direct yourself towards a certain photograph? Or what makes you decide for a certain frame or angle or a certain luminosity or aperture instead of another?

HB: I think every building is different. I cannot really set a rule and apply it to every building. I think the artist looks at the space and then set the rules. When I frame a building I look for my little inside stories, of course, to decide how to look at the building, but they are never the same.

SV: Can you give some examples?

HB: When I was photographing the Brüder Klaus Kapelle, which is a very good piece of work and is also photogenic and accessible, you see a nice photograph of the place in every way. The landscape around it is also so beautiful and you don’t have to deal with street lights or trucks. I decided not to do any photos at the time of the opening. I wasn’t interested in photographing for the news, but I wanted to tell my story. I went there after one year, when the kapelle was already well known. I thought: “This is a small tool - this kapelle – that is able to connect you with something very big”. If you are religious, it is a God; if you are a thinker, you will want to understand the sky and the stars. So, in all of the photographs I tried to connect you with the firmament. So, there is a series of photos where the clouds somehow become part of the building and there is another series where I am looking up. Then, there is a photo which was made at night using a very long exposure, so the stars move and become a single line and, because the earth moves, they become one circle. So, you are really connected with the wide movement of the planet.

WITH ESZTER STEIERHOFFER: UNFRAMING#1_ARCHITECTURE

WITH ESZTER STEIERHOFFER: UNFRAMING#1_ARCHITECTURE

BY INÊS MOREIRA

INÊS MOREIRA: Eszter, we have started a conversation some time ago about the ways in which “curating architecture” is conceptualized and practiced so diversely. We have focused on traditionally existing disciplinary disagreements about curating, which can be easily understood and exposed, if we confront art history and architectural backgrounds, as yours and mine. Our dialogues have revolved around joint interests in spatial, urban and experimental art and architectural practices, and it is deeply informed by our curatorial practices and our on-going processes of PhD research. So, to publish our thoughts in a shared article is a way to pull out some conclusions in the form of an informal discussion. However, before we stabilize our knowledges, I immediately propose a twist… instead of exploring the expected divergences and discrepancies of disciplinary practices… I propose thinking of “curating architecture” from a more abstract notion of “unframing”. Notions as framing, capturing, and freezing in a surface, or the bi-dimensionality of a captured image, are central to photography and other bi-dimensional representations of architecture, and, therefore, become central gestures of most architectural exhibitions and to a substantial part of practices “curating architecture”. I am interested in curating as a practice disturbing the ways we see, understand and, above all, the modes in which we know architecture. This position is both informed by interdisciplinary theoretical research and by certain contemporary [art] curatorial practices which underline critical positions and produce active spaces. I believe the notion of Unframing can bring enmeshment and complexity back to the act of depiction in architecture. If depicting, as a curatorial gesture, is a procedure clarifying, framing and delimitating an object, unframing would produce disturbance, focusing simultaneously on the backgrounds, the externalities and the offstage, or to consider the pluri-dimensionality of that which is outside the central focus of a picture. So, what I am proposing is to jointly think if “unframing” can constitute a mode of curating architecture, beyond representation?

ESZTER STEIERHOFFER: ‘Cura‘, the origin of the word curating means taking care or healing, putting back together. One would think about curating conventionally as linking/putting together, orchestrating, engineering or even as building or facilitating and contextualizing – framing in a way. In contrast, your concept of curating as unframing addresses the fundamental problems of focus and definition; your method of producing disturbances reminds me of experimental tools of the avant-garde. The situationist practices for example used chance and chaos to re-introduce complexity in the perception of urban space and reading of architecture. ‘Unframing’ however in relation to curating architecture is also concerned with the problems of the media and display of architecture, which go far beyond simple formal or practical questions of the exhibition making. As most of the times it is impossible to present a building (in its physical reality) within the museum, it is even more difficult to reproduce or translate its surrounding urban context, meaning and signifiers; and the question remains: if in our everyday life we are all (inevitably) subjects of and to architecture, what is its object, or where and how architecture presents itself? If framing and capturing can be described as representation in contrast of pure presentation, I’d like to think about unframing as a search for architecture – an impossible mission in a way... In relation to the drastic boom of international temporary exhibitions there is a significant change in the media (and representation) of architecture - described also as an interdisciplinary space in-between contemporary art practices and architecture. This shift can be noticed even in the case of mainstream architecture exhibitions like the Venice Biennale: the last two editions were focused on the cities and experimental architecture, this year Kazuyo Sejima put emphasis on inviting contemporary artists to participate. Whereas in the museum or gallery an architectural structure (the edifice) provides the infrastructure for showing art, the situation here is reversed: artworks provide the structure to open up and exhibit or reinvent architecture, in a way art becomes the ‘stage’ for architecture.

IM: You are reversing the roles of container and content, suggesting art and spatial installations as a curatorial approach to architectural space… instead of architectural space as a support for art works…

ES: In my research I am interested how certain contemporary art practices like installation art, performance and time based media can be compared or differentiated with architecture as object, medium, experience and environment. I am researching interpretative possibilities for exhibiting architecture by reversing conventional perspectives of site-specific curating, public art commissions and ‘scattered-site exhibitions’. I am also interested in site specific curating, where art is decoding and revealing or activating architecture ‘on site’. This is what I described as staging and you as unframing - I think. Could you maybe give an example?

IM: I will have to be more precise: to understand what I am calling Unframing it is essential to consider the non-representational dimensions of architecture and space. Unframing would proceed by referring the non-representational, whether experiential, phantasmatic, or even aural resonances of space and the architectural. This is what we have explored collectively in a project I curated at the burnt aisle of the Rectorate of the University of Oporto, an (architectural) building curated after an accidental fire. The exhibition-project is an essay with/through/about the space and materiality of a building, about contingency, emptiness and reverberation. In other words, it approaches presences and absences in architectural space. This project is a practical example; the architectural remnants were curated through artist’s installation works: art explored the spatial and material resonances of space, and, together with the building (as a set), the project has curated architecture. Curating is understood as the enactment of space, sometimes through artists work.

ES: So, in a way you describe artistic practices that deal with the notion of space as curatorial gestures?

IM: Not exactly… although some creative spatial practices can be understood as curatorial gestures, I am referring to artistic practices set in collaboration with a curator / architect. Curating as a collaborative spatial practice in which artist are invited to participate. This is a very particular position, not all art practices dealing with space are “curatorial” and it’s not my intention to generalize… My background education as an architect and a practice designing exhibition spaces – installation, set or scenography – is fundamental to understand this particular approach to curating. “Aftermath and Resonance!” project exhibited and interpreted architectural spaces: room, contents, mediation were part of the same concept. Other experiments have been exploring this unframing gesture, the exhibition project “Burn it or not?” at Ataturk Cultural Center (AKM) in Istanbul Biennial 2007 dealt with an existing architecture building from a similar perspective: artists´ work (installation, photography, sound, and video) was invited and installed in the building to think of architecture: the exhibition considered the particularities of the AKM building where it was installed, questioning the modernist politics of its foundation, and its future to come as a structure, whether to be demolished, remodeled or maintained. The response didn´t come from architectural design, as most architecture exhibitions do. The modernist and exuberant building was appropriated, undoing all exhibition conventions of white cube and black box, and notions of technical representation and the endowment of the architect. The sound installation Memories On Silent Walls, by Erdem Helvacioglu, interfered with AKM architecture bringing in the exterior square of Taxim and playing the memories of political moment of Turkish contemporaneity. Both Oporto and Istanbul projects, different in scale and visibility, were experimenting with architecture as an exhibition space, architecture as an autonomous building, the collective memory built through architecture, the resonances of architectural void, a mode of curating architecture by unframing it…. I believe there is something in common with your new project, can you tell us about the project you are developing in a building in Budapest? How can site-specific art produce modes of curating architecture?

ES: It is interesting that you mentioned the “Burn it or not?” exhibition at Ataturk Cultural Center which both of us have seen separately and regard as an important point of reference, one example of our shared inspirations, while there is also a clear difference in our methodology and its interpretation. This might stem from our different backgrounds as you already pointed this out in your introduction. ... but in your question you referred to an exhibition which is still a work in progress, curated collaboratively with Judit Angel, art historian and curator of Kunsthalle Budapest. The exhibition will take place in Ernst Museum and will consider the building of that museum itself. The Art Nouveau style building of the Ernst Museum was originally built in 1912 to host a private collection, a small cinema and a few private flats and artists’ studios. The building went through several physical, formal and functional changes and today functions as a public gallery of temporary exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art. It is not only an interesting historical artifact, but also an important landmark in the Budapest art scene and cultural life. The exhibition focuses on the relation between space, history, vision and architecture, on the phenomenology and analytics of perception as well as on issues related to space / architecture and its representation. Participants come from the field of visual arts, architecture, design and film-making, works include site specific commissions as well as others are linked more implicitly to Ernst Museum and focus on broader problems related to the architectural object and its interpretation. The exhibition is conceived on three levels: site-specific interventions, film projections and a theoretical section. We are working with the title ‚Related Spaces‘ which is a reference to interdisciplinary relation between architec­ture and other art practices, the interrelated discursive fields surrounding architectural issues. With this exhibition we wish to enable new perspectives on the Ernst Museum as well as different understanding of the relationship between visual art and architecture.

see the intire interview in scopiomagazine aboveground: architecture

WITH BEATRICE GALILEE: UNFRAMING #2_CITY

WITH BEATRICE GALILEE: UNFRAMING #2_CITY

BY MARIANA PESTANA

MARIANA PESTANA: Our last conversation was built around architectural criticism and its expressions in the form of writing and curating. We talked about behavioural codes and informality and how that influences the way people relate to spaces and their programme. We shared experiences in architecture and our common belief in interdisciplinary practice. Lastly, we spoke about objects and their ability to convey messages and exert criticism.

As you know, I am interested in architecture’s potential of using its very language to communicate. I have been conducting experiences accordingly, combining architecture curation with a careful choice and manipulation of the space where it happens. An example of this is ‘Pub Talk: spatial settings to eat and drink’, a conference we (DE Magazine) organised with MA&DE (with Paulo Moreira) at London Met last month. There, a group of young practitioners from different disciplines presented projects on eating and drinking, themes that I have identified as the key ingredients to start a good conversation. The fact that this talk happened in a pub (The Bailey) intended not only to test the influence of spatial background in the development of the conversations but also to grant informality to them. The pub is historically a place of encounters and exchange of ideas, thus we aimed to situate the talk between an organised event and a spontaneous evening at the pub where people came but not necessarily because there was a talk happening.

BEATRICE GALILEE: I love the idea behind Pub Talks.
When I consider the best conversations I’ve had about architecture, they have been on long tube journeys across London or over the eat on a late-night easyJet flights. It’s when I’m stuck in queues, traffic jams, stranded by weather or ending up on the wrong vaporetto that ideas and connections happen. The Venice Biennale is a fantastic thing but only rarely do I return to London inspired by what I’ve seen. For me, the loosening of the mind and flashes of inspiration rarely happen when the dictaphone is running.
I’m interested in how the conversations in The Bailey went. Did highlighting the spontaneity of the space put it under too much scrutiny? Did it perform? By promoting the conversations on a poster and organizing a time and providing an expecting audience affect the flow of a pub conversation you were aspiring to? Did the discussion take on a different tone and nature? Or did the space maintain its informality?

MP: Well, during the presentations I wouldn’t say that being at the pub was any different than at a conference room, except for the moment where James Gilpin offered a sip of his Export Whisky… this wouldn’t happen so naturally in a conference room. Thus, the most interesting moment was the conversation after the presentations, moderated by David Khon. There, everyone was sitting on the sofas and all over the floor. The conversation was very long and vivacious, to the point that people were fighting over the microphone as everyone wanted to talk at the same time…so, it was quite informal. Then the conversation continued outside as the pub had closed. I would argue that there was an informality that is not common to this sort of events! During the conversation, the dominant theme was speculation, the building of fictional scenarios and the narratives conveyed through architecture. Then it inevitably fell into a self-reflection around the fact that we were in a pub, talking about pubs, drinks and food. David Knight mentioned that the most interesting conversation about architecture he had ever had was at a pub and that epic conversations are often triggered by the consumption of alcohol.
Hans Ulrich Obrist once said that the more intersting moments of a conference are those immediately before and after it happens, where people meet and share ideas.
Could you tell me about your project space ‘The Gopher Hole’, which is in itself a place between a bar and an architecture gallery, and how the fact that you now operate within a specific place is generating a community around it?

BG: We’ve had a few debates at "e Gopher Hole and I’ve always felt that the conversations before and afterwards are what make the event worthwhile. We had a talk on critical futures in architecture and nearly every professional architecture writer in London was in the room. "at kind of cross-fertilsation is what makes our space valuable. We hope it’s going to be the kind of place where interesting people meet and plans are hatched. In the weeks before we opened I met Kyong Park, the founder of Storefront for Art and Architecture, in Seoul. He told me that the social aspect of Storefront always trumped its exhibitions and events. It was primarily a social club, a convergence of people and ideas, and that’s why it still maintains itself as such a huge presence, despite being pretty puny in size.

The Gopher Hole is a project I am running with aberrant archite!ure. As a group we want to explore ideas in contemporary culture and to provide a platform for others to do that too. It’s not an architecture gallery – I find that idea a bit perverse. The two words don’t belong together at all. But, like you, we do have an intrinsic interest in architecture as a medium. There is a lot of discussion and debate about curating architecture at the moment but essentially our space is circumnavigating it by being as open as possible to ideas. We had a TEDx conference streaming content directly from Ramallah at the weekend and we had speakers from the Russell Tribunal as well as some incredibly moving speeches about the situation in Palestine. What’s more, we can host a Pecha Kucha on young archite!s; we are having band nights and hosting dinner parties. By removing ourselves from ideology and not associating with one dogma or another, we are free to be a platform for other people’s ideas.The Gopher Hole is essentially a political idea – it is a nickname given to the informal tunnels that are dug beneath the Mexican/US border and used to smuggle people and goods. While there are other more playful connotations (we are in the basement of a Mexican restaurant; we are spontaneous and informal; we are totally independent) we do take that notion of interstitial spaces of under-the-radar and not officially sanctioned quite healthily. We definitely share an enthusiasm for this kind of interdisciplinary collaborations – who do you work with and why?

MP: It is true that there is a certain amnesia threat to exhibitions. Unlike texts, to which one can always return to, exhibitions live only in a very particular time and spatial frame. However, I strongly believe in the power of intuitive, nonverbal communication, and despite working as a writer as well, I feel more inclined towards a form of criticism that operates beyond the textual, verbal outline. Exhibitions are spatial for a finite period in time but the physical objects displayed – pieces – have the potential to evoke experiences from the past or to suggest ideas for the future. In that sense, they transcend the time and space of the exhibition in itself. Furthermore, the use of analogies, metaphors and allegory are processes of highlighting dimensions that usually remain under the shadow of slightly more linear or limited approaches. Therefore, I’ve been working with different mediums, from photography to jewellery design, allowing the audience to interpret, question and take a position, exploring the potential of the exhibited material to evoke ideas beyond the very object on display. Different people look at different aspects and qualities of the objects. This is very valuable for me and less likely to happen with a written piece, where it seems to be easier to persuade the audience to agree with your opinion. Perhaps more than text pieces, are objects open to interpretation?

ORO ROSSO

ORO ROSSO

 BY MICHELA FRONTINO

5 am. Thousands of seasonal workers leave their ghettos to reach Daunia lands, a district nearby Foggia in South Italy, where they normally spend 12 hours a day working in the fields to fill up an average of 10 to 12 harvest bin of tomatoes. They are paid accordingly to their productivity: € 3 per harvest bin which normally weights 300 Kilos. At the end of the day they get € 36 gross pay, minus the cost for the transport to the fields. They are offered a packed lunch for € 2, 50 for a sandwich and a tuna can. It turns out that agricultural workers in the South of Italy are around 80.000, a number that is constantly increasing. They arrive in Italy to look for accommodation and a job in order to send money to their relatives. They end up becoming enslaved workers with no chance of changing their condition, instead. They emigrate from Morocco, Tunis, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Poland, Romania, Albania, to find place in a warehouse in the country side, far from the surrounding cities. They wait there hoping that the farm employers “caporali” call them to work, even for just one day and with no guaranteed salary. Enslaved workers live in strenuous conditions, with no drinkable water, electricity or toilet facilities, forcing them to go outside for their basic needs. They are not provided with health assistance or fundamental civil or labour right. As the warehouse gets overcrowded, many share the same bed sleeping on a mattress or on the floor. With no access to water, they are forced to walk long distances to get the nearest irrigation sites or public fountains.

The “Oro Rosso” (Red Gold) project has been realized in the fields of the small towns of Cerignola, Candela, San Severo. In the Rigno Scalo ghetto, the author met migrants living in unsustainable conditions, social exclusion and vulnerable to violence and intolerance. Migrants packed in wooden barracks, built with reused materials, or in unfinished old colonial houses, where the walls are precarious and partly destroyed. These are their homes, as far from the cultural and social integration ideal as they seem surreal.

STRATIFICATIONS

STRATIFICATIONS

BY CRISTINA CORAL

My father was a composer, music has always been a very important part of my life. After graduation and several and different work experience I have chosen the camera as my main artistic expression.My approach to photography and its development was almost entirely self-taught. After having attended a workshop I immediately understood what the camera could have given me in terms of experimentation and discovery of the world around me and more over of myself. Photographing has become an imperative language.
Amongst my recognitions are: Two gold medals in the category Portraiture and other at the PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris 2014; Honorable Mention at IPA International Photography Award 2014 in the category Fine Art Portraiture;Honorable Mention at PX3 Paris 2015.
My work has been exhibited for some events of Vogue Italia, at Convivio, at Circus Gallery at Carla Sozzani Gallery.
Many of my pictures have been featured as ''photo of the day ''on Vogue.it. and published in many magazines on line as The Huffington Post De., Pizza digitale,Phinest, Art and Fact, Vectro Ave N.Y, Lenscratch, Posi+tive, Artwort, Jungle Magazine U.K, Forth Magazine L.A, Anormalmag Spain, Ignant De., Juliet Art Magazine, Uploadyourtalent,LÓeil, Worbz,Rai News Blog, SFMoMa Blog,NikonSguardi ,Seeance Magazine Berlin...
My project ''This living hand'' , ''Hidden beauty'' and ''Do not disturb'' have been published on Lens Culture and Some of my photos are represented by the agency Art and Commerce of New York.

synopsis
Time has its forms of beauty, but as in nature also in the men stratified sediments of emotions and thoughts.
Seaweed, sand, wood sprigs,blades of grass like layers of states of mind.

 
editor's note
The presented project was selected from a spontaneous submission made by Cristina Coral.

PROMISED LAND

PROMISED LAND

BY MICHAŁ KONRAD

Michał Konrad (birth name Michał Smuda) Polish photographer born in 1983, living in Wodzisław Slaski. From an early age, interested in visual art.

The main subject of his photography is man. In his work he concentrates primarily on the psychological sphere. It shows how a person perceives the environment in the modern world and how the environment affects him. His visions often have a surreal character, balancing on the border of dream and imagination. His photographs are self-portraits.

He is the author of several photographic cycles.

His works include: Transition, september 2016.; Promised land, january 2017; Amnesia, february 2017.; Butterfly, march 2017; Insomnia, july 2017.

His photographs were presented at individual and collective exhibitions. They have been published in Polish and foreign magazines, the most important of which are: „Pokochajfotografie”, „Kwartalnik literacki Szafa”, „Seventres”, „Dodho”, „Scopio Network”, „DpiMag”, „Visionary”, „F-stop”, „Monovision”,”Black”, "LoosenArt".In 2017 he was selected as one of the twenty most talented Polish photographers, DEBUTS project.

URL:  http://michalkonrad.allyou.net


Synopsis

I run in my thoughts, in my head.
Forest silence, then scream.
The influx of false thoughts.
I am looking for one true thought.
Which will let me fall asleep on time.

The title "Insomnia" shows the anxiety in the modern world, caused by lies. The era in which we live is called energy. As far as man is concerned, it means his constant excitement.
Lots of information that constantly stimulate my brain. Ask yourself the question that is true and which is false? Where is the boundary between fiction and reality? Maybe I'm not real either? Maybe I'm not here? Maybe I just think I'm!
Insomnia is an attempt to show man in the world of manipulation. Lost among pervasive falsehood.

Insomnia is my fifth cycle, its ending is equal to one year from the start of my work with self-portrait. Soon I will start working on a project that will include all my cycles. The theme of the project will be "Identity", which I would like to finish with the release of the book version of the album.

April - July 2017

PHILOSOPHERS

PHILOSOPHERS

BY CATRINE VAL

Catrine Val was born in Cologne (Germany), and started out her career in Vienna (Austria) working in the field of advertising, as a commercial artist. She finished her BA at the Art Academy in Kassel (Germany). She also attended a post-graduate studies at the Kunsthochschule für Medien, in Cologne. She worked for 6 years as an assistant lecturer to Bjørn Melhus at the Art Academy in Kassel, in the field of virtual reality, where she further developed her artistic position.

"Philosophers,

Our times are afflicted by a flood of narcissism, and an obsessive cult of self-expression. Visually building upon “Philosophers”, I examine the loss of connection to nature in our modern, technically driven world, in which nature has become a strange terrain. The longing for nature as a fixed reference point and the wishful thinking of an intact romantic worldview in which man and nature are in harmony, is facing an accelerating clock in our fully mechanized age. Art’s task changes in a world suffused with generated images. It is imperative to reflect on what are often highly sensitively charged worlds of images, the ways they are represented. In our constant rapid time modern life has become far-removed from anything resembling authenticity or truth. The relationships between nature and technology, language and body, body and space, have changed rapidly. The order of the day is to understand the world from the vantage point of abstraction and not to abstract from the world. In our post internet society ,they have altered the way we regard communication and identity, character and  our own selves and femininity . Man is the only living species that can transmit and expand his store of knowledge from generation to generation; but such transmission requires a process of thought on the part of the individual recipients. The entire way, we approach the world has changed. In historical sense Philosophy claimed to provide a rigorous method to search for the meaning of life, and it was a precious substitute for dogmatic religion. But in modern times, religion among the educated classes in Europe and North America has lost ground, and intellectuals are neglecting the basic human need to find answers. Philosophy has shrunk in reputation and stature. “Philosophers” as one oeuvre is itself an open system: it employs transformations, mirror images, doublings and replications to develop realist fictions that amaze and surprise the beholder and raise questions concerning functional contexts as well as ideas of value.

In this  modern western society women are rarely find in inhabiting a highly austere, analytical space, such as the one which philosophy involves. Slowly but still not globally, the opportunities are changing for better. Women have at last gained access to higher education, what they can achieve in the fields where men have distinguished themselves, above all in philosophy is still vulnerable, reacting at the margin areas of contemporary philosophy  and speculative thoughts.

The genre of philosophy flourishing literately arises within the framework of a new need and frankness on the quest for the meaning of life. This is the highly influential age of the Internet in which we are constantly flooded by information in fragments. Each person at the computer is embarked on a quest for and fabrication of his or her identity. The web mimics human neurology, and it is fundamentally altering young people's brains. The web, for good or ill, is instantaneous. Philosophy belongs to a vanished age of much slower and rhetorically formal inquiry.

By referring to the external visual similarities of historical and current philosophers and the characteristics of their work, a reference to the historical philosopher, which incorporates his life and work, is made. As a contemporary interpretation of traditional philosophic thinking, “Philosophers” takes advantage of the iconographic approach of current media discourse. “Philosophers” as one oeuvre is itself an open system: it employs transformations, mirror images, doublings and replications to develop realist fictions that amaze and surprise the beholder and raise questions concerning functional contexts as well as ideas of value. It exposes the effects of individualism and technicality on modern man's position within his natural environment. “Philosophers” brings together different approaches in ideas and longings, which in their own way all aim to go beyond modern and postmodern thinking. The concept of "philosophers" quest for a new terminology and a new grammar of thinking about contemporary art and focus on new meaning of vision and gender."

INSOMNIA

INSOMNIA

BY MICHAŁ KONRAD

Michał Konrad (birth name Michał Smuda) Polish photographer born in 1983, living in Wodzisław Slaski. From an early age, interested in visual art.

The main subject of his photography is man. In his work he concentrates primarily on the psychological sphere. It shows how a person perceives the environment in the modern world and how the environment affects him. His visions often have a surreal character, balancing on the border of dream and imagination. His photographs are self-portraits.

He is the author of several photographic cycles.

His works include: Transition, september 2016.; Promised land, january 2017; Amnesia, february 2017.; Butterfly, march 2017; Insomnia, july 2017.

His photographs were presented at individual and collective exhibitions. They have been published in Polish and foreign magazines, the most important of which are: „Pokochajfotografie”, „Kwartalnik literacki Szafa”, „Seventres”, „Dodho”, „Scopio Network”, „DpiMag”, „Visionary”, „F-stop”, „Monovision”,”Black”, "LoosenArt".In 2017 he was selected as one of the twenty most talented Polish photographers, DEBUTS project.

URL:  http://michalkonrad.allyou.net


Synopsis
I run in my thoughts, in my head.
Forest silence, then scream.
The influx of false thoughts.
I am looking for one true thought.
Which will let me fall asleep on time.

The title "Insomnia" shows the anxiety in the modern world, caused by lies. The era in which we live is called energy. As far as man is concerned, it means his constant excitement.
Lots of information that constantly stimulate my brain. Ask yourself the question that is true and which is false? Where is the boundary between fiction and reality? Maybe I'm not real either? Maybe I'm not here? Maybe I just think I'm!
Insomnia is an attempt to show man in the world of manipulation. Lost among pervasive falsehood.

Insomnia is my fifth cycle, its ending is equal to one year from the start of my work with self-portrait. Soon I will start working on a project that will include all my cycles. The theme of the project will be "Identity", which I would like to finish with the release of the book version of the album.

April - July 2017

THE ONES WE LOVE

THE ONES WE LOVE

BY ELISE BOULARAN

“I’m one of those people who, no doubt out of modesty, don’t externalize their feelings publicly. Especially when it’s about my roots, the important people of my life. Except maybe through pictures. I can tell you that they teach me what love really is.”

Work In Progress

CRYSTAL IDENTITY

CRYSTAL IDENTITY

BY AGNIESZKA GOTOWALA

"Crystal Identity” is long-term ongoing project. I started the researches and basic realizations in 2017. I decided to work on it when I realized that for a long time I was feeling that I existed only in the face of nature. Towards nature, I’ve felt like I was making revisits. Photography has become part of the act of action. And the landscapes and their character have become the witnesses of what happens in the space. I started to look for the "in situ” places, where there appear sublte union, indirectly related to refuge. Allegedly nature was supposed to release alienation.

It’s a tractate on apperception and becoming the part of. I’m inclined to reach out to the invisible and undermine that what is invisible does not exist. I nurture the fragments of nature, traces it contains as the carriers of memory, archetypes. I penetrate those unobvious resources of nature, that are never deprived of its identity. I explore dependences between subconsciousness and memory, traces recalling the past events, which are a memorial as proof of what is hidden. I take the journey to search for identity, balance, roots embedded without the context of time and space.

ABOUT THE AUTOR: 

I’m multidisciplinary artist from Poland, I work within the visual and performance arts. I focus on the processes of the research, exploration and transformation in the fields of human states and nature, and the memory and identity they contain. My artworks have been presented and published in Poland and abroad. I graduated from Photography at the department of Multimedia at the University of Fine Art in Poznan, Poland, and earlier, also from Technical Physics at the University of Technology in Wroclaw, Poland. I practice Butoh.  

Website: www.agnieszkagotowala.com

WALL ABSTRACTS

WALL ABSTRACTS

BY KIP HARRIS

Kip Harris is a retired architect with degrees in English literature, humanities, and architecture. For nearly 30 years, he was a principal of FFKR Architects in Salt Lake City, Utah focusing on university / K-12 school buildings and Native American gaming projects. The last of these was Talking Stick Resort / Casino in Scottsdale, Arizona. His interest in public art has lead him to a three year membership of the Art Design Board of Salt Lake City and to extensive use of Tribal art in Native American casinos.
His photographic work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in the US, Canada, and Europe and on a variety of photographic websites. He now lives in a small fishing village on Nova Scotia’s South Shore in a heavy timber cape originally built in 1823.

synopsis

“... the canvas began to appear ... as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."

Harold Rosenberg

Brightly painted walls in sunlight have the power to stop me in my tracks. It may be the surprise of something novel or the accidental harmony of the color combinations. I have felt this surprise when confronted with the deep blue of Giotto’s Upper Chapel at San Francesco in Assisi or seeing Blaue Reiter or Fauvist paintings or opening a new box of Color Aid. Often the best color combinations occur as part of a repair effort that wasn’t quite finished, leaving it in a state of unresolved tension like the best abstract expressionist paintings. These painted walls can create an immediate connection between the observer and the painter - a dialogue too often missing from our streets and buildings.

The images in this portfolio come from hours of wandering through poorer parts of cities looking at collapsing walls using a camera instead of a brush to capture what caught my eye. Trying to convey this evanescent quality is slippery. It can pass by your eyes like water.
 

editor's note

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

WAYS OF ESCAPE

WAYS OF ESCAPE

BY ANTONIS THEODORIDIS

Ways of Escape is an intricate entanglement of symbols, human figures, and unresolved landscapes. Portrayed as the birthplace of western culture, Athens is often the perfect backdrop for projected historical assumptions, which cast shadows on a shattered present reality.

Is every city expected to live up to the specific ideas that formed it? Can a city escape its future? The series follows the traces of these ideas by observing the surface of Athens.

About the author:

Antonis Theodoridis (MFA Photography University of Hartford) is an artist based in Athens, Greece working in the mediums of photography, photo-montage and installation. His work explores history, fiction and mythology set against a backdrop of modern western identity. His first monograph Newspaper from the American West is published by Agra Publications in 2018. His recent work Ways of Escape has been exhibited in the Benaki Museum, as part Athens Photo Festival '17 main program.

Website: www.antonistheodoridis.com

VISÕES NOTURNAS I

VISÕES NOTURNAS I

POR JOÃO MIGUEL BARROS

Sim, há lugares em que a noite é mais noite, com as sombras a confundirem-se com os corpos e os objectos. Tudo o que por lá se move parece projectar uma realidade escondida.  Naquelas ruelas, por exemplo.  Naquelas ruelas interiores que os grandes blocos de prédios permitem e comprimem, há uma vida oculta, imperceptível. É preciso entrar pelo escuro para sentir esse pulsar. No reverso dessas ruelas as vias são largas, iluminadas, com uma luz calculada para projectar a exuberância das grandes casas comerciais e para deixar respirar os neóns e as aparências.  A cidade vive destes contrastes. Sem contemplações acolhe a liberdade dos poderosos e, ao mesmo tempo, a escravidão dos homens amarrados a um trabalho que os consome lentamente. Desfigurando-os. Até se tornarem invisíveis dos demais.

Yes, there are places where night is more night, with shadows confused with bodies and objects. All things moving around there appear to be projections of a hidden reality. In those lanes, for example. In those inner lanes that great blocks of buildings create and compress, there is a hidden, imperceptible life. It is necessary to enter through the dark to feel that pulse. Behind these lanes, the streets are wide, well-lit, with light calculated to project the exuberance of the large shops and give the neons and appearances room to breathe. The city lives on these contrasts. Without ceremony, it accommodates the freedom of the powerful and, at the same time, the slavery of the men tied to work that slowly consumes them. Disfiguring them. Until they become invisible to others.

Sobre o autor:

João Miguel Barros nasceu em 1958, em Lisboa  

É advogado de profissão, em Lisboa e Macau. Foi codiretor da revista de cultura e artes visuais SEMA (1979-1982). Recentemente começou a expor os seus trabalhos, tendo publicado em 2017 o livro de fotografia Between Gaze and Hallucination.  

Actualmente tem no Museu Berardo, Centro Cultural de Belém, uma exposição de grande fôlego denominada "Photo-Metragens", constituída por 14 pequenas histórias independentes, com imagens e textos ficcionados.  

Nos últimos anos tem vindo a estudar os principais artistas contemporâneos chineses e japoneses. É curador freelancer na área da fotografia contemporânea, tendo organizado duas exposições de fotografia de artistas chineses em Portugal e estando a trabalhar em vários outros projectos de curadoria para o próximo triénio.

THE FRONTLINE RELIES ON YOU

THE FRONTLINE RELIES ON YOU

BY FRANKY VERDICKT

After the civil war which ended in 1949 there are two China’s, the People’s Republic of China * and the Republic of China better known as Taiwan*, both are locked in a complex military, political and diplomatic confrontation. Since then, the relations between China and Taiwan have been characterized by limited contact, tensions, and instability, due to the fact the Civil War merely stopped without formal signing of any peace treaty and the two sides are technically still in a state of war. The questions of independence and the island's relationship to mainland China are complex and inspire very strong emotions among Taiwanese people. As such, the political status and the legal status of Taiwan (alongside the territories currently under Taiwan jurisdiction, like the islands of Matsu an Kinmen) are in dispute. In 1971, the United Nations gave the China seat to China instead of Taiwan: most states recognize China to be the sole legitimate representative of all China, and the UN classifies Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". Taiwan has de facto relations with most sovereign states. US policy has been described as one of "strategic ambiguity", seeking to balance China's emergence as a regional power with US admiration for Taiwan's economic success and democratization. 

These series are to be framed within this historical context. In between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan lies the small Taiwanese islands of Matsu and Kinmen so close to mainland China they can see each other. The islands are culturally related and geographically very close to the China, but politically to Taiwan. This geographical proximity of these two ‘enemies’ made me curious. Although things cooled down over the years, the islands remain still heavily militarized. The islands of Kinmen, which means Golden Gate and are only a couple of kilometeres from the Chinese city of Xiamen, has a long and rich common history over more the 1700 years. The archipel of Matsu, very close to the Chinese city of Fuzhou, used to be just some small fishing villages, but became a frontline between the two states, with thus heavy militarization as a result. Only in 1992 the military administration was lifted and (some) of the island became open to the public. 

* For easy reading and understanding of the texts the word China will be used to described the People’s Republic of China and the word Taiwan will be used to describe the Republic of China. By no means the use of these words have political connotations, these words are used for more easy reading and understanding of the texts, since to my believe, these words are commonly used to describe both states.

** The title of these series The frontline relies on you refers to a free translation of the song Jun Zai Qian Shao (君在前 哨 ) by the immensely popular late Teresa Teng which is being used as propaganda in Beishan Broadcasting station on the island of Kinmen. 

About the author

Verdickt’s work shows a fascination on how ideas and ideologies can sublimate into images and formulates them into a visual story. In order to find stories he travels around the globe, mainly Asiatic countries.In 2014 he published his first book ‘The South Street Village’, his second book ‘Nobody Likes To Be Hindered By WorldlyTroubles’was shortlisted for the Liège PhotobookAward,the Belfast PhotobookAward and the Athens Photobook Award. In 2015 he won the LensCulture Exposure Award. His work has been published internationally, including GEO Magazine, Private, De Volkskrant, De Morgen, among others. Franky Verdickt was born in Belgium in 1971. 

PUBLIC ART

PUBLIC ART

BY MIGUEL PINHO

Invited authors: Miguel Carneiro and Pelucas Martin

“PUBLIC ART is a broad term which refers to artworks in any MEDIA created for and sited either temporarily or permanently in public places. Public places are generally associated with external spaces; however, artworks can be situated outside in private spaces, such as shopping malls and private housing developments, or inside in public spaces, such as publicly funded ART MUSEUMS and GALLERIES or hospitals and libraries. Consequently a definition of what constitutes public space is problematic”.1

In 2001, David Hickey2 brought together the work of twenty nine artists at SITE (Santa Fe International Biennial) in an impressive installation created by Graft Derin. Several kinds of works were presented in that installation, which significantly turned the museum into a large “Architectural Frame”. This event at SITE proved that the installation of an exhibit may adopt different strategies and configurations and that, more often than not, it is the artwork’s spatial configuration and location itself that will create a new space. In this case, the result is an impressive “Architectural Frame”, with a non-traditional configuration, where the placement of the works reinforces the innovative spatial character of the museum.

Like the artists in the seventies, who felt the need to create their own spaces to experiment with new languages and to answer the excessive “institutionalization” of conven- tional spaces such as museums and galleries, public art also tried to find an answer for the traditional classical monumentality. It is important to clarify what public art means; the defi- nition is controversial and not easy to establish with accuracy, implying different perspectives. Although easily identifiable, Malcom Miles’s description – “the term ‘public art’ generally describes works commissioned for sites of open public access” (in “Art Space and City: Art and Urban Futures”) – is still not enough to offer a coherent definition. In my opinion, Harriet Senie3 offers a more significant answer to contemporaneous impulses when she tries to define public art as a consequence of having audience as a starting point for the creation of the artwork, thus making it respond to the viewer’s perception of that very same work.

(...)

The artworks here on display, mainly chosen because their supports are several plans of building that have become derelict, belong to two authors from different fields who show strong similarities in the work they develop. They are not trying to be “main stream” nor are they exactly “against the current”. They embrace their individuality through great phantasy and imagination. They are simply artworks.

Miguel Carneiro’s intervention target “Cospe Aqui” [“Spit Here”] is well known by those of walk around Cedofeita14. Although dating back some years ago, it is still very up-to-date. Being somewhat hostile, the author states that “Who was born and has lived in Porto has an instinct to slalom between the many obstacles left by men and animals along the city pavements. (...) COSPE AQUI [SPIT HERE] stencil appears in this context, as an attempt to maximize this cultural habit as an evocative provocation. Although at first it randomly competed with other marks in the pavements, the stencil soon started to direct itself to more international targets, from political propagandas, including party headquarters and multinationals, to the most exclusive art gallery entrances, everything could become a target for the excess of saliva that we daily gather in the mouth”. The juxtaposition of the stencil with signs of political nature, near art galleries, clearly shows its interventionism, a critical message to the oblivion of some, through an image an undeni- able and much needed irreverence. On the contrary, Pelucas Martin is an author with a great graphic accuracy, who in his imaginary looks for references of his back- ground. Sometimes architectural details of that early period stand out (see the mural in the former Campanhã space, nowadays “Oficina Arara” [“Arara Workshop”], Campanhã Porto). The phantasy is rather evi- dent in the different artworks. Sometimes a kind of anthropomorphism appears, poking at the frontier of illustration, especially when referring to a set of characters who, outside their habitat, contradict the images commonly used in today’s precarious urban environments.

1 http://www.imma.ie/en/downloads/publicart.pdf

2 North-American Art critic. Author of The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty and Air Guitar, Essays on Art and Democracy. Professor of Art Theory and Criticism at the University of Las Vegas.

3 Senie, Harriet, Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation and Controversy, Oxford University Press, New York,1992.4 Cf. The presentation of several works by avant- garde artists, such as Calder, Picasso or Moore, just to name a few. mouth”. The juxtaposition of the stencil with signs of political nature, near art galleries, clearly shows its interventionism, a critical message to the oblivion of some, through an image an undeni- able and much needed irreverence. On the contrary, Pelucas Martin is an author with a great graphic accuracy, who in his imaginary looks for references of his back- ground. Sometimes architectural details of that early period stand out (see the mural in the former Campanhã space, nowadays “Oficina Arara” [“Arara Workshop”], Campanhã-Porto). The phantasy is rather evi- dent in the different artworks. Sometimes a kind of anthropomorphism appears, poking at the frontier of illustration, especially when referring to a set of characters who, outside their habitat, contradict the images commonly used in today’s precarious urban environments.

NONVERBAL SPACE

NONVERBAL SPACE

BY SHIN NOGUCHI

Shin Noguchi is an award winning street photographer based in Kamakura and Tokyo, Japan. He describes his street photography as an attempt to capture extraordinary moments of excitement, beauty and humanism, among the flow of everyday life and has a discreet, poetic and enigmatic approach that is sensitive to the subtleties and complexities of Japanese culture without using posed/staged and no-finder/hip shot.
"Street photography always projects the "truth". The "truth" that I talk about isn't necessarily that I can see, but they also exist in society, in street, in people's life. and I always try to capture this reality beyond my own values and viewpoint/perspective."

synopsis

"Nonverbal Space", it is unstable, distorted, and contradicts what we have created. And [Ma], exists in there.
The characteristic of the Japanese [Ma] is very beautiful, also delicate, and if you are not always aware of the very small amount of undulation of [Ma], it loses balance immediately.
I tried to listen to a lump of invisible voice (or the voice that was confined) of [Ma] existing in nonverbal/unstable spaces of our daily lives, and I aimed to visualize the two invisible elements, [Ma] and human [Gou] (karma/conduct) that underlies in [Ma].
Also, in this project, I dared to express the human being as the existence (visualization of [Gou]), not as an individual but by making the whole nonverbal space the subject without including people in the frame. this way, i am managing the awareness of the relationship between individuals, society and the surrounding environment for the viewers.
Danshi Tatekawa said that "Rakugo is an affirmation of human [Gou] (karma/conduct), that is, inconsistency", and Alexander Pope also said that "To err is human, to forgive divine".
As they talked towards "people", could their words really be said in front of the "Nonverbal Space" which is more closer to the "society"? and could that "forgiveness" recreate another type of hope or a new possibility in this land where everything had changed to something that looks irreversible?
I shoot the "Nonverbal Space" (it is unstable, distorted, and something contradicts what we have created) while being aware of their words which were created by human beings as well.
Finally, by expressing the subjective viewpoint of the photographer, this project is, so to speak, an antithesis against the new topographic photographs.

editor's note

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

MY TOWN SIÓFOK

MY TOWN SIÓFOK

BY MARIETTA VARGA

Rarely does something in reality look the same as in our memories. This morning was the first time in a long time that I was able to see my home town precisely as it exists in my mind. The small town where I grew up is called Siófok,- in Hungary- it's right on the lake shore of Balaton, the largest lake in Central-Europe. It's often called the summer capital of the country due to its touristic position, with 25.000 inhabitants which in summer is often going up sevenfold. For most people Siófok is only known as their holiday place, with the blue lake and happy summer moments, however those who grow up here can see the town in an entirely different way. The places and things important to me are totally different than those liked and remembered by the tourists, and I feel that this is how it should be. I left this place 10 years ago, and every time I return I feel a deep nostalgia. I think that growing up here, and being a local, is a lucky situation as it enables me to show this place in an unusual and unexpected context.

About the author:

Marietta Varga was born in 1992, in Hungary. She completed her studies, BA in Photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design between 2013-2016.  Currently living and working between Budapest and Siófok. Her visual world is described as simple and clean, balanced with precisely directed compositions.

Her sensitivity in the use of colours and spatial awareness help to create the unique atmosphere of her visual world. Her pictures often have strong symbolism where the viewers can find themselves in a strange surreal dream.

website: https://www.mariettavarga.com/

MIDDLE LANE

MIDDLE LANE

BY JAN PIOTROWICZ

Jan Piotrowicz is an urban landscape and architecture photographer based in Manchester, UK. Piotrowicz is soon-to-be photography graduate. In his work, city as a subject and issues of urban space and planning are critical and most prominent features. In his work is present a constant inquest into those domains. Other inspirations include psychogeography and topography as the modes of exploring and responding to the urban environment. "La beauté est dans la rue".

Piotrowicz is obsessed with a notion of space and my photography is an attempt to capture it. He believes that the places people live in tell more about them than any portrait would ever do. With a little background in urban planning, He tries to seek for areas where urban meets nature, where ugliness unites with beauty. He constantly try to give places a new meaning.  Piotrowicz believes that the public keeps many secrets to be revealed. 

synopsis

In 2007, Professor Danny Dorling from University of Sheffield made an attempt to measure and map English national stereotype: the myth of the North and South differences. Can something so vague can be presented as a specific geographical feature on a map? A line was created, spreading from North-East regions of Lincolnshire down to the South-Western county of Gloucestershire. The line seems to be not only an artificial border between the two distinctive areas; it also runs diagonally across the whole Midlands and beyond. The project is about materializing that line. 25 towns and villages were picked with the strict rule: the border needs to fall directly on them. By playing a reversed connect-the-dots game, the journey plan was established. Each single picture is an attempt to seek identity: North, South or maybe Mid? The line acted as the guide in search of the default, generic England, free of the stereotypes and divisions.

Editor´s note

The presented project was selected from a spontaneous submission made by Jan Piotrowicz.