I'm Here With You

 
 

I’M HERE WITH YOU

BY GOWUN LEE

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

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

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

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

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


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



 

You don't look Native to me

 
 

YOU DON’T LOOK NATIVE TO ME

BY MARIA STURM

“You don‘t look Native to me is a quote and the title of a body of work, that shows excerpts from the lives of young Native Americans from around Pembroke, Robeson County, North Carolina, where 89% of the city’s population identifies as Native American. The town is the tribal seat of the Lumbee Indian Tribe of North Carolina, the largest state-recognized Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River, which means they are federally unrecognized and therefore have no reservation nor any monetary benefits.

I am tracing their ways of self-representation, transformed through history, questions of identity with which they are confronted on a daily basis, and their reawakening pride in being Native. The work consists of portraits, along with landscapes and places, interiors, still lives, and situations. The aesthetic framework that is presented offers clues – sometimes subtle, sometimes loud – for imparting a feeling for their everyday lives.

My work engages an unfamiliar mix of concepts: a Native American tribe whose members are ignored by the outside world, who do not wear their otherness on their physique, but who are firm in their identity. Through photography, video and interviews, I am investigating what happens when social and institutional structures break down and people are forced to rely on themselves for their own resources. This raises questions to the viewer regarding one’s own identity and membership to the unspecified mainstream.

This work was started in 2011.”

Maria Sturm

Since 2011, Maria Sturm has photographed teenagers from the Lumbee tribe in and around Pembroke, North Carolina, where almost 90 percent of the population identifies as Native American. Unlike other native tribes, the Lumbee were not forced to move during colonial expansion and have subsequently maintained a strong connection to their land. Sturm’s series You Don’t Look Native to Me considers how young Native people present themselves today in relation to their identity and culture. At first glance, Sturm’s photographs might appear to depict the daily life of a community almost anywhere in America, but elements of hybridity—Halloween fangs on a child in Tuscarora regalia; dreamcatchers and a school portrait on a living room wall—signify the mixing of heritage and contemporary culture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maria Sturm (b. 1985, Romania) received a diploma in Photography from FH Bielefeld in 2012 and a MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design. She is a Fulbright and DAAD scholar. She has won several prizes including the New York Photo Award 2012 and the DOCfield Dummy Award Barcelona 2015 with the work Be Good.

Her most recent work You don't look Native to me about the unrecognized Lumbee tribe of North Carolina was nominated for Vonovia Award, shortlisted for PhotoLondon La Fabrica Book Dummy Award and made the 2nd place at Unseen Dummy Award. It was published in British Journal of Photography and Filmbulletin and exhibited in the German Consulate New York, Clamp Art New York, Wiesbadener Fototage, Encontros da Imagem, at Artists Unlimited Bielefeld and at Aperture Foundation New York among others.

It will be next shown at Addis Foto Fest and Photo Vogue Festival.

Having met in during a month-long residency at Atelier de Visu Marseille and workshop with Antoine d'Agata in 2012 Cemre Yeşil and Maria Sturm kept in touch ever since. Their permanent exchange led them to start a collaboration and in 2014 they have photographed For Birds' Sake, a work about the Birdmen of Istanbul. This work was published as a photobook by La Fabrica Madrid and featured in Colors Magazine, The Guardian, British Journal of Photography and ZEITmagazin among others. It was exhibited during Internacional de Fotografa de Cabo Verde, FotoIstanbul, Bitume Photofest Lecce, Organ Vida International Photography Festival Zagreb, Format Festival Derby, Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie and at Daire Gallery, Sol Koffler Providence, La Fabrica Madrid, Pavlov's Dog Berlin, Deichtorhallen Hamburg and it was a finalist at PHE OjodePez Award for Human Values 2015 and Renaissance Photography Prize 2017 and nominated for Lead Awards 2016 and Henri-Nannen-Preis 2016. It was also shortlisted at Arles Author Book Award 2016 and Prix Levallois 2017.


instagram: https://instagram.com/maria__sturm/
facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/maria.sturm
twitter: https://twitter.com/maria_sturm

 

INAUGURAÇÃO/OPENING da terra acesa | sput&nik the window |

 
da Terra Acesa_T.jpg
 

É já este sábado, dia 24, a partir das 21h30, que inaugura a exposição da terra acesa de Rita Castro Neves e Daniel Moreira na sput&nik the window, no Porto. 

O som é do Gustavo Costa e o texto da exposição da Vera Lúcia Carmo.

Sinopse

Para quem se debruça sobre a paisagem, os incêndios florestais portugueses - da destruição, da má política, do lucro fácil e da má memória – são matéria sensível para trabalhar questões muito prementes sobre território, ação humana e natureza.­­

Por força dos grandes incêndios de 15 de outubro de 2017 em Pedorido, Castelo de Paiva, nas desativadas Minas do Pejão, o carvão que se encontra debaixo da terra e que está naturalmente em combustão lenta, ativa-se com o aquecimento global provocado pelo incêndio florestal, entrando em combustão acelerada visível. À destruição provocada em cima da terra corresponde uma ebulição debaixo dos pés – num movimento descontrolado e em cadeia que ameaça, com fumo e fogo, a vida à superfície.

Foi nas antigas Minas do Pejão, dentro do seu terreno vedado, e na altura a ser tratado com químicos, que com Gustavo Costa, gravámos imagens e sons com paus queimados de uma árvore que outrora pertenceu a uma mata.

da terra acesa é uma instalação realizada para o espaço da sput&nik the window, que apresenta uma paisagem e o seu avesso, para a partir da construção de uma aparência e do seu reverso pensar a destruição do território e a estrutura do comportamento humano. Assim se reacendendo feridas antigas.

Sound is by Gustavo Costa and the exhibition text by Vera Lúcia Carmo.

Inauguração no sábado 24 de Novembro de 2018 às 21h30
Último dia da exposição dia 19 de Janeiro de 2019
Rua do Bonjardim nº 1340 no Porto | sputenik169@gmail.com
Horário por marcação (919 010 716) de quinta a sábado

daniel moreira & rita castro neves
www.danielmoreira.net | www.ritacastroneves.com

 

The Rage Of Devotion: Liza Ambrossio

 
 

THE RAGE OF DEVOTION

Some time ago I decided to change my life in the most extraordinary way possible. I looked in and without intending it I remembered the phrase with which my mother said goodbye the last time I saw her at sixteen years old – “I wish you well, and believe me I hope you´ll become strong and brave, so you can be merciless when the time comes to destroy your body and crush your soul the next time we see each other”- After an overwhelming emotional breakdown, I started this series of images intermingling with pictorial canvases and photographs of my family archive to impel the observer to immerse themselves in my psychology. 

I stumble, but in the same way freeing myself, finding their lascivious looks, my fear of touch and the instinctive repulsion that represents for me the concept of “family”. In “The rage of devotion” I discover that although I look, I don´t want to see, because what lives inside me, looks and it is completely monstrous.

Liza Ambrossio

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Liza Ambrossio is an young Mexican artist based in Madrid, Spain. Her body of work combines photographs of macabre archive with cryptic paintings, performance, intervention, installations, videos, psychology, lucid nightmares, science fiction, ero-guro and witchcraft that come together in free association.

Wen she was sixteen years old she asked for one of the house keepers of her mother's house to steal photographs of the family albums while Liza self-portraying herself looking for ways to survive away from her family's own decision, while compiling chilling early-morning scenes in Mexico City, her mental and real travels from her adolescence to her adulthood. In her project The rage of devotion-La ira de la devoción, the feminine is threatening because it seduces and in the poetics of its seduction devours. Project awarded with the Discoveries scholarship of Photo España-La Fabrica, the scholarship portfolio review for FotoFest 2018 in Houston, she was selected to participate for New Visions 2018 in the Cortona On the Move Festival, Italy, she received the first honorific mention for the Emerging Prize within the Encontros Da Imagens festival-2018, Portugal and the first prize in the Voies Off Award 2018 in Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France. Resulting in a photo book co-edited by Desiertas Ediciones and La Fabrica.

For her latest project  Blood Orange-Naranja de Sangre, Liza paints with three colors: orange, red and yellow the psychology of uprooting, madness, love and loneliness as an affront to terror and dehumanization because she believes that human passion is in itself a act of challenge. Series awarded with the FNAC New Talent Award, 2018, the 6th. Edition of the (TAI) Photography Talent Grant, Liza is currently selected for the contest Full Contact in Tarragona, Spain and she was winner of the Babel Gallery Award (Brazil) in the first Contest of Contemporary Photography of Latin America in Monterrey, Mexico and the DOCfield Dummy Award Fundación Banc Sabadell 2018 in Barcelona, ​​Spain. She has recently been nominated for the Plat(t)form prize of Winterthur Fotomuseum in Switzerland 2019 and she has been invited to exhibit at the FORMAT19 festival in the UK;  Liza has been granted with scholarships for production residencies in Iceland, the United States and Luxembourg 2017-2018.

Links
www.lizaambrossio.com
https://vimeo.com/276196677
https://vimeo.com/user66654129
https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/10/04/babelia/1538649113_222111.html
https://www.lofficielmexico.com/arte-y-cultura/entrevista-liza-ambrossio
http://www.camaraoscura.net/liza-ambrossio-la-ira-de-la-devocion-apertura-13-septiembre-17-noviembre-2018/?lang=en

 

ROSIE APPLES: STREETS IN THE SKY, THE AYLESBURY ESTATE

 

ROSIE APPLES: STREETS IN THE SKY, THE AYLESBURY ESTATE

scopio aboveground: city

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

Technical notes
All shot on Mamiya 645, Kodak portra


Contact
rosie@rosieapplesphotography.co.uk

 

MARIO LIFTENEGGER: CONFLICT ON THE WALL - MURALS IN BELFAST

 

MARIO LIFTENEGGER: CONFLICT ON THE WALL - MURALS IN BELFAST

scopio aboveground: architecture

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

Descriptive Memory

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


Technical notes
Colophon: Belfast 2007 to 2010


Contact
mario_liftenegger@gmx.at

 

PEDRO VANZELER COLAÇO: DRIVE IN

 

scopio aboveground: architecture (h. mention)

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

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


Contact
pvcolaco@gmail.com

 

CARLOS AZEREDA MESQUITA: THE RADIANT CITY

 

CARLOS AZEREDA MESQUITA: THE RADIANT CITY

scopio aboveground: city

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

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

Technical notes
Impressão digital
60x40cm cada imagem individual

Contact
carlosazeredomesquita@gmail.com

 

ANDY SPAIN: ECOCITIES

 

ANDY SPAIN: ECOCITIES

scopio aboveground: city

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

SAMEER TAWDE: CITY EYES

 
 

SAMEER TAWDE: CITY EYES


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

Description

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technical notes

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

Contact

sameer.tawde@gmail.com

 

PEGGY FAYE: POETRY OF THE BANAL

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Contact
am@klotzekstudio.com

 

STEPHEN F SHERMAN: THE HIGH LINE

 

STEPHEN F SHERMAN: THE HIGH LINE

in scopio Magazine, Aboveground: city

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

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

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

Contact
sfsherman@mac.com

 

MACIEJ GRUSZECKI: CITY LIMITED BY AIR AND COLD

 

MACIEJ GRUSZECKI: CITY LIMITED BY AIR AND COLD

scopio aboveground: city (h.mention)

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

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

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

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

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

Contact
contact@maciejgruszecki.com

 

POL VILADOMS: DRESSING

 

POL VILADOMS: DRESSING

Synopsis

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


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

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

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

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

Technical notes
HASSELBLAD 500CM camera with KODAK EKTAR 100 film

Contact
info@polviladoms.com

 

ALEKSANDRA WOJCIK: SOUND OF EMPTINESS

 

scopio aboveground: territory

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


Technical notes:

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


Contact
ola.wojcik@yahoo.co.uk


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

 

TANGRE LAURA: OUTER-URBAN FOREST

 

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

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

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

Contact
laura.tangre@gmail.com

 

CHRISTOS KOUKELIS: THE STATE OF THINGS

 

CHRISTOS KOUKELIS: THE STATE OF THINGS

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

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

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

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

The state of things

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

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

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

About the photographer: 

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

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

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

Contacts
chkoukelis@yahoo.gr

www.christoskoukelis.com

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

 

CLÉRIO AUGUSTO BACK: NATURALMENTE URBANO

 

aboveground: architecture

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

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

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

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

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


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

 

RICHARD CHIVERS: ARCHITECTURE OF URBAN DISCORD

 

RICHARD CHIVERS: ARCHITECTURE OF URBAN DISCORD

in scopio Magazine, Aboveground: city

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

Contact
richard@rchivers.co.uk