Mahesh Shantaram – Addis Ababa

“Much of my work is personal, experiential, and purely subjective. There is no urgent story that needs telling and the only truth in it is what I make up along the way. My trip to Addis Ababa was motivated by a simple desire to go some place about which I had very little knowledge and start the process of discovery from virtually zero. This series is the result of a quest for the colour of Africa.”

Mahesh Shantaram is a photographer based in Bangalore and works in the genre of subjective documentary photography, which basically means that instead of being weighed down by the responsibility of ‘telling the truth’, which is virtually impossible in his opinion, he just records his personal experience of an event or situation. He celebrates the everyday, the mundane, the leftovers when all the exotic has been consumed or left to dry. You could call him a soldier in the war against cheesy, predictable, and aww-so-cute imagery. After wasting away in a cubicle in Washington DC, he decided to go to Paris to study photography. When he returned to India in 2006, it was immediately apparent to him that Indian wedding photography as we know it needed some ventilation and that’s how he became one of India’s best-known wedding photographers.

PHOTOTALKS: ‘Phil Underdown’
Written by David Pollock
© courtesy of Phil Underdown

1. Regarding the project Grassland. What interested you about this area and what topographic and geographic characteristics were useful for exploring  your interpretations of Landscape?

«My introduction to the site was a gradual one. Over the years, I would bicycle by the entrance, which was gated and clearly off limits. By the time it became a wildlife preserve and opened to the public, I was very curious. Entering the Grasslands for the first time was very much like entering a land that had once been forbidden. That the main part of the site is hidden from the outside, really reinforced my desire to see it as a separate land, defined by its borders, topography, and patterns of usage.

Once I was there, the experience visually was an unusual one. The flatness becomes a key part of the visual language. The way a given landscape looks is the result of a long chain of events, influences, and impacts leading up to that moment. In the case of the Grassland, the particulars of its recent history traced an arc that immediately interested me in terms of what it said about our relationship with our environment over time. This arc coincides with the time between when the airport was built and the decision to designate it as a National Wildlife Refuge, during which a variety of other uses left their traces. I was very interested by the ideas that there were all these layers of use contributing to its present state.

This site is being maintained and managed as a sort of hybrid natural space––almost like a farm whose crop is grassland birds––and it struck me that this is an important type of landscape to think about. It was also close to my home, so easy to spend a lot of time there.  I often felt while photographing Grassland that this is what is left to us, as residents of the Northeast of the US––a managed landscape with little virgin wilderness. How do you explore what is so well known, so well mapped, measured and ordered? I think you explore what is close at hand and see what happens when you keep going back. The history of photography is full of grand vistas of mountains and plains. I tried to find these features on a smaller scale in the cracks and mounds of Grassland.»

2. Grassland, The Trappers Lament, The Field and Botanic Gardens projects depict the interaction of humans and the natural world. They could be seen as attempts to reconcile our objectification of nature and our inescapable immersion and interrelationship with it. Can you comment on this statement?

«I think the term reconciliation is an interesting way into this discussion. It implies a separation but also a desire to be rejoined, or less at odds with our environment. We seem to be very self-conscious about our relationship with nature, very aware of this feeling of being at odds with it, and yet we’re somehow unable to visualize ourselves as just another part of it.

I’ve always been interested in where my ideas and mythologies about nature come from, how they affect my daily life, and how they play out in the landscapes that I live in. Grassland, a nature preserve overlaid onto an old airstrip, was a landscape near my home, and the beavers in The Trappers Lament were literally in my backyard. In The Trappers Lament, the beavers’ arrival forced a reappraisal of my relationship with this piece of land, my “ownership” of it, forcing a confrontation with some of my cherished myths and beliefs about my own environmental values. The managed landscape of Grassland, its history and current form, required me to rethink what came to mind when I thought of a grassland habitat or a wildlife refuge, to reconcile my preconceptions with this new form.»

3. Which photographers have influenced your work, and what other artists including writers influence your picture-making?

«In general, the work of the New Topographics and Dusseldorf School photographers has always been very influential. Some more specific examples—John Gossage’s, The Pond. Jem Southam’s Upton Pyne series, Frank Gohlke and his Sudbury River work, Gilbert Fastenaekens’ Noces, all interest me for their sustained, intense attention to a small personal landscape. Some other photographers and books—Simone Nieweg’s Landschaften und Gartenstuke, Mark Power’s 26 Different Endings, Gerhard Richter’s Wald, anything by Olaf Otto Becker… While working on The Trapper’s Lament, I’ve become increasingly interested in the interactions with the animals in our lives, so I’ve found the work of Charlotte Dumas, Neeta Mahdahar, and Tamany Baker interesting and inspiring.

Bill McKibben and JG Ballard have been the two writers that I keep coming back to. In The End of Nature, McKibben talks about losing his cherished beliefs about nature and bemoans the widespread and complete influence of humans. Over time in subsequent books he has come to write about what do we do now as we let go of the myths we can no longer afford to hold on to if we are going to try to cope with climate change.

JG. Ballard, in books like Crash, High Rise and Concrete Island, has the ability to define a landscape by concentrating on its key components, and then building a world around it. He also has this amazing ability to write in a very realistic, matter-of-fact way that slowly takes you to a stranger and stranger place, without you even realizing it, until you suddenly become aware of the strangeness of your surroundings. In structuring and editing Grassland, I always had Ballard in the back of my mind. An abandoned airstrip is a very Ballardian space, and I wanted to enter into it slowly and then have the strangeness of it sneak up on the viewer.»

4. I think of a photographic project as a process of editing and distillation of meanings. A  sort of feedback system or dialogue that opens new pathways that can clarify intention or create new ones. Grassland was ongoing for four years. Can you describe your process of discovery while creating this body of work?

«There’s a little bit of shoot first ask questions later in my methodology, especially in the beginning of a project. Being able to go back over a long period of time is very useful in allowing room for this process to occur. When I began shooting at the Grasslands, I was driven by my initial reaction to the oddness of the space. Visually interesting to me, the site also presented a challenge. Its flatness forced a very limited visual and compositional palate. Ultimately, the flatness and the flat horizon, because of this engineered space, become a central feature that runs through the project.

There were also certain key images that clarified the project for me as I went along. Some of them didn’t make it through the editing process, but they were very important as road signs that pointed me in certain directions. Others stand out in the final edit as the DNA of the project, containing all the instructions for understanding the project as a whole.

An early image of a lone skid mark leading off the runway and into the weeds got me wondering about what stories would explain this; this place was filled with traces that told stories I would never know. This provided me with a direction to go during editing and subsequent shooting. I was building up a portrait of a world based on these traces. What did a world defined by these traces look like? Just as with the beaver project, there was a core idea of wondering what does the landscape of this collision—between humans and nature and history—look like? In both cases, my understanding of what I was seeking expression of in the landscape was something that developed over time, not something that I set out to illustrate.

The opening image in Grassland was also very important in helping me shape and conceptualize the project. All the elements of Grassland are there in this one picture: the birdhouse, the mowed field, the trees, but then fog…the viewer doesn’t know how to make sense of it yet. Very early on I knew this was the opening image. Settling on this image made it much easier to edit the remaining images. It set up a trajectory, much like settling on the title of the book—which references the abstract concept of traveling in a strange land, and sets Grassland apart as something separate from the Shawangunk Grasslands National Wildlife Refuge. That clearly conceptualized and set the tone for the rest of the project.»

5. The sky takes up half the picture in many images in Grassland and are often filled with vaporous clouds that rise above the fading human construct. Transcendence is a word that comes to mind.

«The skies in Grassland were partly born out of pragmatic reasons. I didn’t like the images I was getting with lots of blue sky, but overcast images were a little too static and dull. The rising fog is sort of in between the two. The lifting fog, indistinct clouds and distant horizons help make the space seem bigger, endless, more like fragments of a larger land.

The sky also manages to set the abstract concept of Grassland apart from the specific material place, The Shawangunk National Wildlife Refuge. Grassland became an imagined place to travel into, a place that I tried to build out of thousands of images taken over a long period of time. By keying into certain types of lighting, the atmospherics unified the images, and helped define a more abstract concept. I’m not sure what it is about the clearing fog, but there is a certain flux to it, a neither-here-nor-there quality that I really like. It helps take it out of the specific moment. I recently read an interview with Toshio Shibata in which he talks about trying to achieve a quality in his photographs that removes them from a specific place and time. “I take a lot of photographs and show very few. If there is too much reality, too much identifiable sense of time and place, I don’t show these images.”

Grassland image #221 illustrates this well. This image for me really defines and illustrates the conceptual space of Grassland. The foreground, in fact all the ground stretching to the horizon, is mowed grass with the lines from the mower stretching off the edge of the image. The trees, receding into the haze of the horizon, could also seem to go on forever, and the clouds, hazy and indistinct, reference a general sense of weather and climate rather than a specific weather event. If a video game programmer tried to define the landscape of Grassland in this image, it would only need a very simple set of rules to generate this same image. A certain number of trees, a certain length of grass, extended indefinitely… Seeing it this way helped me see more clearly the rules that this real place was the product of.»

6. After all this process we end up with the object. You have made books and presented in a Gallery setting. Is the print an important part of your statement? Could tell us something about your experiences regarding publishing books.

«For me the book is the end form of the work. The act of making it, from conceptualization through design, sequencing and editing, is an essential part of developing my ideas. It also allows the viewer a fuller experience of the work than what is possible on a gallery wall. Finding a form of self-publishing that was affordable and of high quality for the Grasssland book was really important. This limited edition artist book has a very tactile and intimate quality to it; it becomes a cross between a book and a gallery object, and people have reacted positively to that aspect of it. I was lucky to have the support of photo-eye and Kehrer Verlag’s Trouves series to get the Grassland book out to a wide audience.

Professionally, I spent many years as fine-art color printer. So, although I’ve struggled with the meaning and function of the gallery world, I’ll always love the prints. And, although I see the book as the final form, and the place that I can put together a coherent thought-process and statement, I’ll always believe that the book or the web can’t do justice to the visual impact of the final prints, which is why I spend way too long on the process of producing the final prints.»

(Selected work above)

About Lukasz Wierzbowski:
I’m 28 years old, self taught photographer currently living and working in Wroclaw.
In my works I try capture the relationship between the model and the surrounding in its purest form.
Every session is a kind of a journey both for me and my models as I don’t like to plan all the details of the sessions in advance, I like to be inspired by the mood of the place and models attitude. I try to catch the in-between moments giving the photos a kind of movie stills vibe.

For more of Lukasz’ work please visit his Flickr and Tumblr –
Limited Edition Prints are also available for purchase.

Coffee flavour (2009–current)

Time with a cup of coffee it’s time to focus and clear your mind, to hunker down and get ready for the day. It is simultaneously a wonderful way to relax and to lose touch with reality for a moment, time to slow down and recharge, time for “Coffee flavour “.
The idea of “Coffee flavour” project (carried on since 2009) was inspired by the film “Coffee and cigarettes” by Jim Jarmusch. Presented series are portraits of personalities rather than people themselves, personalities shown through human thoughts and the moments in which they were born, quiet moments of contemplation.

About Artur Sikora:
I am a Dublin based photographer and architect (Born in Poland in 1975). My life’s passion is for people and places so in turn I specialize in photographing urban landscapes its buildings and their inhabitants. My passion for all things human and architectural always draws me towards the inhabitants and the surrounding landscapes of the object being photographed.
My photographs were published several times and exhibited in Dublin and in London (last year).
I am also the winner of international competition  – ‘Black and White Photographer of the Year 2011’ in ‘Time’ category.
My entire personal work is film based as I am boundlessly devoted to analogue photography. I admire endless possibilities and quality of handmade images.

For more of this series and Artur’s work please visit his website and blog:
☞ www.artursikora.com
☞ www.artursikora.blogspot.com

El Río (2011–current)

This project originates in  my need to photograph something alien to me – a strange and far-off place. An approach to the wild and indomitable landscape of a river, the Tajo (Spain). Covering different areas of this river, I try to record pieces of landscape and the profound imprints of human activity on this place. A territory where men and animals meet and relate to each other, giving rise to conflicts of interests and supremacy. I am interested in finding the irrational sense of survival that permeates these lands on the banks of the Tajo river. One can still recognise the struggle that man has always maintained with nature.

Andrés Medina was born in Madrid in 1978. He studied Multimedia Design at ESI Design School in Madrid.
He started photographing compulsively in 2008. Passionate about blogging and social networking, in 2009 he created Seeking Magazine, a blog where he shares and discusses the work of emerging photographers and projects related to contemporary photography. Also there is a section with interviews to our featured photographers to have a better view of their work. Seeking Magazine is a publication edited from Spain, the contents are displayed in English and Spanish.

He is also the founder of the photography collective ’Thinking Photography‘, where he has published six issues with some emerging Spanish photographers.

In 2010 he attended a documentary photography course at Blank Paper school with Antonio Xoubanova.
Currently lives in Coslada and works in Madrid, where he combines his work as art director at an advertising agency with personal projects of documentary photography.

For more of his work please visit his portfolio and flickr!
☞ www.andresmedina.com
☞ www.flickr.com/photos/andres_medina

You can also get in touch with Andrés on Facebook and Google+

A Brief Explanation of the Series Bronson Caves
(2009-2010)

The Bronson Caves are located in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park and are famous as a stage set to countless motion pictures and television shows. The caves are actually man made and were originally a rock quarry during the early 1900s used to lay streets for an expanding Los Angeles. A hundred years of filmmaking has occurred at the caves imaging events from explosions and gun fights to the discovery of cave paintings. Reflecting on this history, the caves are documented on various formats and film stocks over time as an unchanging landscape amidst a chaotic specter of fictional realities.
In the series of photographs titled Bronson Caves, the caves served as a stage set yet again. I performed actions for the camera with massive sheets of colored paper. Since a long-exposure photograph was produced rather than a motion picture, the papers were recorded as voluminous, glowing colors. The materiality of the rainbowed forms, emerging from the mouth of the cave, dancing about the canyon, and bubbling up from the ground, are based solely in the photographic process, and can only be experienced when viewing the final photographic prints. If a visitor to the caves were to accidently stumble upon my performance they would only see a mass of crumbled colored paper draped awkwardly over a man moving/dancing to a camera positioned on a tripod. The goal of these performances was to create sculptural, photographic objects that interacted with the history and architecture of the caves.

Brice Bischoff is a Los Angeles based artist, born in New Orleans, LA. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007. In 2007, he was a member of the art collective, Self Made, who ventured on a 22-city art tour across the United States and Canada. In 2010, he participated in New Orleans’ Prospect 1.5 Biennial curated by Dan Cameron and exhibited his photographs in a solo show at Lemieux Galleries, New Orleans. His work is in the collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art. Recently, Brice showed in Oakland at Johansson Projects, and he has an upcoming solo show in Los Angeles at Kopeikin Gallery (March/April 2012).

To see more of Brice’s work please visit his portfolio
☞ www.bricebischoff.com

sensuht
Group exhibition with work by Alexander Fichert, Zorana Musikic, Sarah Sperling, Charlotte Zellerhoff

Vernissage: Friday, 13.01.2012 – 7 pm
Exhibition: 14.-29.1.2012 -  Wed – Sun 4 – 7 pm (and by appointment)
premarts berlin // galerie werkstatt projektraum
oppelner str. 34 – 10997 berlin – tel. +49-30-7007 1860
www.premarts.de

Vier Fotografen, verbunden durch ihr Studium an der Neuen Schule für Fotografie in Berlin, haben sich mit dem Thema “Sehnsucht” beschäftigt. Sie präsentieren die Resultate dieser gemeinsamen Arbeit.

☞ More infos at Neue Schule für Fotografie Berlin

© Boniface Mwangi

Workshop in Cooperation with the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen:

NEVER AGAIN

Multi Media Presentation by Boniface Mwangi, Kenya
Introduced by IngridMwangiRobertHutter

Thursday, 19th January 2012 at 7 pm
ifa Gallery Berlin, Linienstraße 139/140, 1011 5 Berlin

☞ More infos at Neue Schule für Fotografie Berlin

Sergey Chilikov | Selected Works
1978 – 2011

Vernissage: 19.01.2012, 7 pm
Exhibition: 20.01. – 25.02.2012
pavlov’s dog | space for photography | Bergstrasse 19 | 10115 Berlin

Press release:
“Each photo must have an underlying, strong emotion,” says photographer Sergey Chilikov about the way he works. Whether it is images of naked women at the beach or elderly Russian women in their poor dwellings: It is the strong emotionality that binds all his works together.

Since the mid seventies Sergey Chilikov – who holds a PHD in philosophy – has been searching for the secrets of the Russian soul with his camera. In the far away province of Mari El, in which he lives, he has pointed his lens at the life of ordinary people and has developed a distinct aesthetic language that is far from any romantic view of country life. Locals pose in their villages simultaneously revealing and accentuating the austere surroundings. Chilikov’s Russia is a land unaltered by the drastic collapse of the Soviet Union and populated by characters that cross the line from the traditional to the sensual.

The exhibition at pavlov’s dog shows selected works from Chilikov’s steadily growing body of work of the past 30 years.

The German catalogue with his works has been published at Benteli publishing house. The exhibition was organised in cooperation with Grinberg Gallery, Moscow and Schilt Publishing.

© Sergey Chilikov | From the Kolorizm cycle, Alatyr, 1995 С-print, 35x35 7 + 2 А.Р.

© Sergey Chilikov | From the Tuva series, 1991 LightJet print, 51x51 7 + 2 A.P.

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