Christo and Jeanne-Claude are possibly the best known among those artists who work outside of the gallery in urban and rural environments. Many of their projects involve wrapping stuff in fabric – be it the Reichstag in Berlin, the Kunsthalle in Bern, a medieval tower in Spoleto, etc. Their latest project titled “Over The River” [...]
Archive of posts tagged landscape
David Hockney, the iPad and the joy of landscapes at the Royal Academy
David Hockney is undoubtedly one of the most important of contemporary artists; all the more so because, like that other contemporary great, Gerhardt Richter, he hasn’t been seduced into the ever increasingly ridiculous nonsense that goes under the rubric of contemporary ‘conceptual art’. His latest exhibit at the Royal Academy in London is focused on [...]
Modernist Autumn – Martin Boyce Wins 2011 Turner Prize
In his winning entry for this year’s Turner Prize, Martin Boyce brings an autumnal park indoors and re-interprets it in classical modernist/constructivist terms. A large room, re-designed in every detail. White columns from which flows a designed ceiling of white shapes – “trees” with “leaves” and branches. The centrepiece is a table covered in graffiti [...]
The Artist and the Land – Richard Long
Richard Long is one of the earliest and best known artists to engage in what has become known as ‘land art’. In an innovative way to engage with the land and the landscape, Long’s work is centred around lengthy walks in the countryside. His walks represent an exploration of the land and his relationship with [...]
Nature or Environment? The work of Pétur Thomsen
“Umhverfing is an Icelandic word for the state between nature and environment” says Pétur Thomsen of his project titled Umhverfing. There is clearly no equivalent word in English but the concept itself is intriguing. Icelandic photographer Thomsen has spent the last several years documenting the transformation of undeveloped areas around Reykjavic into suburban developments. He [...]
What’s Your Fetish – People or Nature? Works by John Stezaker
I came across the work of John Stezaker in the latest issue of Ag Magazine. Photographer, writer and critic Gerry Badger writes a review of an exhibit of Stezaker’s work at the Whitechapel Gallery. Of the images that you see here (from the series “Mask”), Badger says “By sticking a postcard over a face, and [...]
Reality in Abstraction – The Images of David Maisel
David Maisel’s work spans many different project over many years. One of his interests is in documenting through aerial photographs the impact that Man has on the landscape. The image above is from “The Mining Project” where he explores the effect of mining in “undoing of the landscape, in terms of both its formal beauty [...]
Stone Nudes by Dean Fidelman
Dean Fidelman has generated a series of mesmerizing images for his project Stone Nudes. Fidelman is a rock climber and he describes his series as “A photographic project that captures the essence of the climbing spirit”. But to me these images speak more broadly than just telling a story about climbing. To my eyes these [...]
Genesis: A Masterwork by Sebastião Salgado
Sebastião Salgado is a giant in the world of documentary photography. His projects are expansive and ambitious. His documentation of the human aspects of Africa was completed before Africa became fashionable. “Workers” – a seven year project – documented laborers in 26 countries. “Migrations” was a 6 year project documenting refugees and other displaced people. [...]
UK Landscape Photographer of The Year
I have so far resisted the temptation to include in this blog what I call ‘straight’ photography – that which is a ‘reproduction’ or ‘reportage’ of some version of reality but which has no strong conceptual basis. In other words photography that brings us little that is new in terms of conceptual thinking. Traditional landscape [...]
