ISSUE 28
Landscape photography inspires an adventure.
One packs a bag, gets the film out of the fridge, makes a thermos of tea and drives someplace. Sometimes the destination is just up the road and other times it is through the deep snow — always looking for something a little out of the ordinary. A sparkle here, an inspirational moment there, and years of returning throughout the seasons to capture and frame a particular place. As we drive, our eyes alight on something that makes us stop, consider, re-frame, focus, and capture a fragile moment. We follow an impulse, prefer one exposure to another, chase our ideas and finally gain a deeper understanding of our last image. You stand back and observe the landscape from a distance. There is a moment of suspension, when you have to go out on a limb. You hear a twig snap, the birds overhead. You focus, find your balance, compose yourself, look for that hundredth of a second — caress it, press the shutter and put your name to it. We orient ourselves, move forward, frame again and expect nothing. It is an instinct we follow.
Being out and about instills a sense of travel and carefreeness. It lightens the heart and quickens our steps. We are spontaneous, we walk, we trespass and look for a quiet, personal landscape. Yet we are always in search of that transformation which takes place before our eyes, hour by hour, and if we listen carefully — the dialogue within ourselves also changes. We challenge our ideas, we think and reason and finally we find the image we are looking for. We accept the landscape, choose how we view it — from a distance or close up, including or excluding certain parts. We make those images that hold our memories, which we will have forgotten in the not too distant future. A tentative grasping of the real — a moment captured.
This issue presents the work of six amazing & talented photographers. They walk us through studies of the landscape: the devastating effects of mass tourism, the arbitrary and often disconnected relationship between the real and its representation, and a re-imagining of childhood. Each artist offers us a deeper understanding of our complex surroundings and the perfect loveliness of photography.
May I introduce
Walker Pickering
Paul Gaffney
Mark Dorf
Katrin Koenning
Luisa Zanzani
Piergiorgio Casotti
