“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
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
“Our Elusive Cosmos” – Shigero Takato
Our Elusive Cosmos
3 Triptychen, 50 x 180 cm, analoge C-Prints, gerahmt, 3 Triptychen, 50 x 180 cm, analoge s/w-Prints, gerahmt, 1 Tetraptychon, 50 x 240 cm, analoge s/w-Prints, gerahmt3 triptychs, 50 x 180 cm, c-prints, framed 3 triptychs, 50 x 180 cm, b/w-prints, framed, 1 tetratych, 50 x 240 cm, b/w-prints, framed
2008, Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) / Academy of Media Arts Cologne // Professorin Julia Scher
Landschaften auf der Erde vor dem Hintergrund der Erforschung des Weltraumes. Der Bezug variiert. Er kann faktischer, wissenschaftlicher, auch mythologischer und religiöser Art sein. Die Fotografien zeigen beispielsweise ein UFO Crash Test Gelände bei Mondsee in Oberösterreich, die heutige Landschaft eines Meteoriten Einschlags im Nördlinger Ries vor 14,5 Millionen Jahren, einen Ort bei Rupite in Bulgarien an dem eine Hellseherin mit Außerirdischen Kontakt aufnahm, ein Mondmanöver Testgelände in Island…
Die Subjekte, um die es sich in den einzelnen Geschichten eigentlich dreht, sind in den Fotografien nicht vorhanden. Lediglich die Umgebungen, die Zeugen der Ereignisse wurden, sind abgebildet. Nur die Titel der Arbeiten lassen Schlüsse zu, was an diesen Orten geschehen ist.
Die Bildserie fordert die Aktivität des Betrachters. Die angegebenen Bildinformationen regen ihn dazu an, die schweigenden Landschaften der Fotografien mit der eigenen Vorstellungskraft nachzuempfinden. Sie bieten einen Raum für Aspirationen unserer Fantasie, unserer Gedanken, unseres Glaubens. Gleichsam erzählen die Orte von unserem Interesse, von unserem Streben nach “oben”.
Landscapes on earth viewed within the context of space exploration. The reference varies: it may be factual and scientific or mythological and religious. For example, the photographs show a UFO crash testing site near Moon Lake, Upper Austria and today’s landscape following the impact of a meteorite that crashed to earth some 14.5 million years ago in the German region of Nördlinger Ries. Also depicted is a place near Rupite in Bulgaria, where a clairvoyant made contact with extra-terrestrials, and a testing site for moon manoeuvres on Iceland…
The subjects which are actually the main topic of the individual stories told by the landscapes are not present in the photographs. Only the surroundings which were witness to these events are shown. And only the titles of the compositions yield insights into what happened in these places.
The photograph series challenges the viewer to become active. The information provided in the captions inspires the viewer to feel connected within his or her imagination to the silent landscapes displayed in these photographs. They provide space for aspirations hidden within our imagination, our thoughts and our beliefs. At the same time, these locations recount our interest and our striving to reach out “beyond”.
website: Shigero Takato
“Instant Traveller” – Youngsuk Suh
There is an inherent irony in the title Instant Traveler. The notion of travel, traditionally understood as ‘the taking of an extensive journey,’ is modernized and repackaged as a consumable. As with any modern consumer product, travel must now be instantaneously convenient. The experiential nature of travel is transformed into an illusion.
‘Nature is still elsewhere … always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction’ wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Nature.’ It is this deferral of experience that is crystallized in the National Park experience. Nature seems always beyond our reach in these parks. My experience at Niagara Falls seemed to bear this out. As I stood in the company of fellow tourists — securely protected by guardrails and warning signs — the scenery in front of me kept evading my grasp. The close-up and first-hand experience promised by the Maid of the Mist excursion boat at Niagara Falls never really materialized. Before boarding, we ‘travelers’ were offered cheap plastic ponchos to keep us from becoming wet. And the five minutes of ‘exploring the roar’ (as the advertisement said) only rendered nature totally invisible.
In a way, the ‘management’ of the National Parks signals sophisticated engineering, and illuminates another irony. One travels away from civilization in order to be immersed in ’pure’ nature only to discover oneself an alternative civilized institution. Yet despite the cynicism implied in the study of modern travel, the genuine desire for close bodily contact with nature cannot be ignored. No matter how illusory the National Park experience may be, one stands at the peak of a mountain yearning to be profoundly moved.
The images in this series are monuments to this individual desire and as the word monument implies, the images are ’atemporal’ depictions of each event. My shooting process would often last several hours, yielding dozens of large-format negatives of the same location. These negative were then digitally reorganized to generate a collective experience. Within the image, the presence of an individual marks the absence of another, and vice versa, continually deferring to be fixed in history.
Addendum
Currently, I am working to expand the Instant Traveler project by focusing on two other aspects, which have grown out of the original concept of ‘nature-institution.’ For the past three years, I have been living in the central valley of Northern California and this has afforded opportunities to observe a variety of human activities within natural environments. Many of these activities take place in less-regulated (or private) lands and seem to be a more direct expression of our desire to commune with nature. These activities are governed by sophisticated rules and equipment and produce a hierarchy of experts and novices. Many of these go much further back in history than the National Park Service. I intend to study and catalog these activities.
Moreover, I have developed an interest in the physical manifestations of this concept ‘nature-institution’ as evidenced in architectural spaces and the objects occupied within them. These spaces range from park visitor centers to nature laboratories, and often provide rich visual metaphors for an ever more modern creation of ‘nature-institution.’ In a way, these manifestations are not so different from the blue ponchos of the Maid of the Mist; i.e. thin layers of protection ironically devised to make us experience a body of water while keeping dry
website: Youngsuk Suh
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