How To Make A Mountain Sculpture – Mai Yamashita, Naoto Kobayashi

„In this project Yamashita and Kobayashi stick to the simple basic principle for creating artwork, that is “Look and Make”. They went to the Swiss Alps, picked up pieces of firewood around their house and created a mountain sculpture in front of the mountain.‘‘

>2006 (Matterhorn) wood 26x14x14cm digital prints 72x48cm

>2006 (Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau) wood 29x18x16cm digital prints 72x48cm

David Goldblatt in colour

My bachelor graduation exhibition is going to start on the 3rd of july. So I’ll keep it short. I came across some recent colour large format work from David Goldblatt who is known for his black and white work from South Africa. Goldblatt is one of the few photographers who put a lifetime (almost 50 years) in documenting South African society. Anyway, here are some photos:

Copyright © 2004 David Goldblatt
Joburg Colour, ‘Hacienda’ cluster housing development, Ruimsig, Strubensvalley, Johannesburg. 27 April 2004

Copyright © 2003 David Goldblatt
Joburg Colour, Clothes for sale on Freedom Square (now Walter Sisulu Square), Kliptown, Soweto, Johannesburg. 10 December 2003

Copyright © 2002 David Goldblatt
‘The mill, Pomfret Asbestos Mine, Pomfret, North-West Province, 20 December 2002′

Copyright © 2006 David Goldblatt
‘Incomplete houses, part of a stalled municipal development of 1000 houses. Lady Grey, Eastern Cape, 5 August 2006′

Copyright © 2003 David Goldblatt
‘Johannesburg from the Southwest’

Arno Roncada

‘Arno Roncada doesn’t take photographs. He invents them. Pictures or fragments of perspective. Sceneries and landscapes. They are created from a mix of instinctive ideas, critical considerations and rational models, existing or not. He takes the time to give form to a space; to show us in full what there is to see and – if possible – what he himself thought to see. In such a way, locations are found or sometimes even literally personally constructed.
Here, the language of modernistic films serves as a pretext for exploring an enigmatic or subjective state of the landscape, using specific cinematografic shooting techniques (e.g. day for night) and thematic affinities.’ (Quote formatfestival.com)

A survey on dutch landscape photography

I did some research in my bookmark and collected some photographers whose interest lies in the documentation of the dutch landscape. Here are some of them

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Population growth, economic activity and lack of space all helped to shape the Dutch landscape. Photographers André-Pierre Lamoth and Jannes Linders were commissioned to capture these aspects under the title ‘The Dutch Landscape’.

Jannes Linders

Jannes Linders

Jannes Linders

Andre Pierre Lamoth

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Hans Aarsman, also known as a writer and for his job at the Rijksacademie Amsterdam. He did some nice large format photography, standing on the top of his RV with a tripod and his camera. In my opinion one of the best ways to photograph the typical flat and wide landscape of the Netherlands.

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Frank van der Salm works with largeformat photography and his relationship to painting is quite obvious. Especially his new still lifes, which almost reminded me of some Jeff Koons collages…I appreciate the older work though.

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Gerco de Ruijter examined the dutch landscape with a self made kite for his camera. The process is quite accidentially, because there is no viewfinder or anything. What a nice way to let the wind do some work And there’s lots of wind in this country.

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Wout Berger did beside his landscape photographs also a lot of close up photography of landscapes. I also posted one of his photos earlier.

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Bas Princen is actually at the same gallery as Wout Berger. There are some other photos on the website. I can’t remember where I found this one. It’s one of my favourites from his dutch landscapes..

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And I also came across some photographers like Marnix Goossens for the first time. These two shown photos are not that retro-like as some of his work on his website.

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After Hans van der Meer started his project about the landscape of lower league football fields in the Netherlands, he started to do the same with more places around europe. Reminded me of my childhood in a small village

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Jan Kosters‘ interest lies in the natural dutch landscape (or what you actually call nature in the netherlands). He documented the whole coastline with his project “dutchscapes”

Hans Aarsman on the mysterious ways of beauty in photography

I did some research about dutch landscape photography and I accidentially came across a great talk on photography from Hans Aarsman, dutch photographer. My english isn’t good enough to describe it properly, but i really recommend to view it on the website.

`Hans Aarsman’s talk at TEDxAmsterdam was titled “From pretty to ugly and back again; mysterious ways of beauty in photography” and the audience judged it one of the highlights of the day. Surprising, insightful and at times hilarious, Aarsman shows different concepts of beauty in photography, and suggests that the only real photographic beauty is to be found in pictures that were made without such a goal in mind.´(quote from TEDx Amsterdam)

Whatever, here’s the link: Hans Aarsman Tedx Amsterdam

“Ex Nihilo” – Benoit Vollmer

I’m totally busy with my bachelor thesis in fine arts right now. I decided to do the theoretical part on the subject of Bernd and Hilla Bechers’ work. Right now I’m reading a lot of books, making notes, writing stuff down and I’m preparing an interview with Ralf Brück, former student of Thomas Ruff and Bernd Becher. Maybe I’ll post some results when it’s finished. I just wanted to post some photography I found the last days. I pretty much like the series “Ex Nihilo”, Benoit Vollmer did in the european alps! He took photos of large ski resorts in the low season. Once the snow is gone, you can see the man-altered landscape.

Long story short, here’s a quote from his website:

“In his Ex Nihilo serie, Benoît Vollmer captures the atmosphere of low season ski resorts.
During the 1970s, building such resorts in these mountain ranges represented an amazing challenge. Benoît Vollmer’s vision of these residential complexes interrogates the notion of heritage that exceeds the ideas of achievement or failure. The shots of the surrounding environment put those bold experiences back in their context.

Here, the artistic choice was to create a serie during the low season, a time when a certain strange atmosphere pervades those places. Places not yet covered in snow, seemingly forsaken. Once they’ve lost their functions, they start existing for themselves. To show this phenomenon is to show what goes on living at the margins of unreality when we’re not there to see it, This set of images that could be seen as purely documentary stages a ghost town simulacrum. We could also view it as a mere model reminiscent of the original meaning of utopia, a place that does not exist and invites various forms of imaginations.”

…aaand as always: There are some more photos on his website. Take a look: http://www.benoitvollmer.com

Wout Berger

Last year I went to a group exhibition, here in Den Bosch. I bought the catalogue (which apparently disappeared), but I could remember one image which got stuck in my head. And today a friend of mine send me a link to a gallery here in the Netherlands and I saw the picture on the website. The Artist is Wout Berger, living in Uitdam, Netherlands.
If you want to see more of his photos, take a look at the website of the gallery Van Kranendonk (based in The Hague). There’s a link to Wout Berger, some info about the artist and some other pictures. Some of them are really different compared to this one, but they still have the same impressionist painter style I quite like.

website: http://www.vankranendonk.nl/artists/berger/slides.html

de bossche planet

I was bored, wanted to take photos, but had to work on my bachelor thesis. At least I did some stupid experiments with some photos. That’s the only one I like a little. Anyway, I don’t think there’ll be any outcome of this trash! I also ordered some rolls of Kodak Ektar, bought lots of chemicals for color development (paper & negative) and a jobo duolab. Can’t wait to get started with developing and printing my first color photos, but right now I really have a lack of motivation with the theory! I already did 8 pages of biography about Bernd and Hilla Becher and now I got stuck with my own plan and I can’t see any Bernd and Hilla Becher anymore! Sooo…Time to get it done!

Meanwhile, take a look at the planet of boredom!

Alex Gaidouk

Some of my favourite photos from young emerging photographer Alex Gaidouk, who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Take your time and take a look at his website. It’s worth! (Link is as always at the lower end of this post)

website: Alex Gaidouk

“Imported Landscape” – Petur Thomsen

Petur Thomsen shows us, in his series “Imported Landscape”, a total different portrait of the icelandic landscape. If you think of Iceland, you’ll probably think of glaciers, mountains, green fields, waterfalls and hot pools, but not of a land with open scars, wounded by machines. Maybe that’s also one of the reasons this work won “The 10th LVMH young artists” prestigious award in 2004. Check out more of his work on Petur Thomsens’ website.

website: Petur Thomsen