A Steady Accumulation of Small Realities

111 S. Wacker (looking East) - Chicago, IL August 2010

State Street (looking Northwest) - Chicago, IL January 2010

Brad Temkin is an American photographer based in Chicago. His work is primarily about the human impact on the landscape, and much of his earlier work reminds me of Virginia Beahan‘s landscape pictures of Cuba and her work with Laura McPhee.

Fire House #98 (looking Southwest) - Chicago, IL July 2009

Highmark Building & Liberty Bridge (looking South) Pittsburgh, PA May 2011

Cultural Center (looking East) - Chicago, IL July 2009

Something that I find interesting from this particular series called “Rooftop” is that it seems to be doing the opposite. Rather than having the human built elements impact the landscape, the natural landscapes have impacted the human built space. The natural areas in the picture are often manicured and self-contained. They are at the bottom of the images anchoring the rest of the picture, while the background consists of truncated and sometimes vanishing buildings.

111 S. Wacker (Nothern View) - Chicago, IL October 2010

Mellon Institute (looking North) - Pittsburgh, PA May 2011

The photographs show unexpected views of the city, giving the viewer insight of places that, although not exactly private,  are definitely not public.

Cultural Center (looking North) - Chicago, IL July 2009

Despite being shot from a high vantage point, Temkin’s images are not about the bird’s eye view of the city like for example Sze Tsung Leong’s “Horizons”. Instead, these pictures are about the relationship between the rooftop spaces and the rest of the cityscape.  The contrast between the semi-private space and the larger backdrop suggest a quiet, almost meditative place, that exist within and sometimes despite the city surrounding it.

City Hall (looking South) - Chicago, IL September 2009

SoHo (looking Southwest)- NYC,, NY October 2009

Some of the images evoke ideas of a post-apocalyptic urban landscape, especially when the natural elements are unkempt and out of control.  This is exacerbated by the lack of human presence in most of the images.  It is as if nature were slowly and organically taking back some of the space that belonged to it. And yet the cohabitation of the natural and built landscape feels harmonious.

City Hall (looking Southwest)- Chicago, IL April 2010

City Hall (looking South) - Chicago,, IL May 2010

Alexander Gronsky is a young Estonian photographer based in Latvia and doing a lot of his work in Russia.

Gronsky’s work focuses on the liminal spaces that humans inhabit. For his series The Edge he photographed in the border areas around the city of Moscow. In Less than One he photographed in areas in Russia with a population density of less than one person per square kilometer. Finally in the editorial story Border Stories he shot in the Russian-Chinese border areas where both cultures coalesce.

The series The Edge and Less than One work as opposite sides of the same idea. In the former there are areas filled with natural landscapes, with trees, snow and animals, while the urban presence lingers in the background.  Where as in the latter there are cityscapes with high rises and cars and the natural presence in the background. The seemingly urban areas (as they are in fact the places with lower population density) long to be more rural, and the seemingly rural areas (that are in reality suburban) wish to be more urban.

Neither of these areas is portrayed in a positive light.  Both of these areas look slightly desolate, old and in disrepair. The fact that many of the pictures are shot during the winter and/or overcast days adds to the feel that these places are desolated backwaters. In the end neither of these type of landscapes seem very appealing to inhabit but rather people have learned to accommodate to the conditions of the place they live in.

Visually, the way these opposing areas are incorporated into the frame is very interesting. Gronsky uses a lot of layering, with the foreground obviously being the area he is representing in the specific series–either the natural or the urban–and in the background the opposite type of area is shown. This kind of layering of space often flattens the image bringing both types of areas together and creating an interesting tension between them. However in many of the images there are strong barriers between the areas, e.g. large areas of snow, a line of trees, a gate or a row of buildings, that prevent the two areas from ever coming together, which in turn adds to the tension between them.  Many of the pictures are also taken from a slightly elevated perspective (at least in relation to the foreground and sometimes above the background too), which adds to the flattening of the image. This flatness makes it seem that the background lies on top of the foreground thus creating a hierarchy between the two. Because of this I get the feeling that the more urban looking area wants to be more rural and the vice versa.

In the end it seems like neither of these areas is fully successful at what it tries to be, but rather they remain in a limbo of urban development.  Having most of the negative aspects of both urban and rural living and, at least from the images, few of the benefits. While the beautiful snowed landscapes are marred by the high rises looming in the background, the urban areas feel outdated and isolated.

KIM Hyunjin is a Korean photographer who studied law and film making.  There is not much information about her (or him, the name works for both genders) online in English other than she published a monograph in 2009 titled Even Your Ears through Farewell Books. Her work is loosely arranged in three portfolios in her website. I find these groupings a bit hit or miss, with some fabulous images and others that don’t make much sense in the context of the portfolio.

I find her strongest work to be the spaces-either interiors or exteriors-she photographs without people, or where people play a secondary role. These images have a quiet intensity that imbue them with an emotional dimension that suggests something important has happened in these places. I get a sense that this something just happened or less often is about to happen.

The images have an implied narrative that gives them emotional weight.  This makes the photographs about more than just describing the space but how we become familiar and attached to spaces.

The way the relationship between foreground, middle ground, background and borders is structured reminds me of some of Stephen Shore’s images.  In particular some exterior spaces were Kim uses repetition and light to create a sense of the depth within the picture.

UME Kayo is a Japanese photographer whose work I recently ran into in Visual Culture Blog looking for photographs to show my students in a completely unrelated topic. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been finally looking at a lot of the work I’ve shot in the past year or so, and trying to make some preliminary edits and figure out where things are going.  Perhaps because of this Ume’s work stood out.

Her pictures use visual puns, sometimes using silly juxtapositions to achieve this, for instance  the picture with the man on fire. Other times something ridiculous is happening but every other character in the image seems unaware or unmoved, placing the viewer as the sole witness of this act. Because of this the images feel very intimate despite being taken at a distance and the subjects being unaware of the camera.

The images also feel rather informal. The composition is often a bit haphazard with objects jumping in the foreground and things being cutoff abruptly. This sense of informality is exacerbated by the time stamp that some of her pictures have. To me that feels very much like a snapshot, although it is something that I have seen other Japanese photographers do (ARAKI Nobuyoshi comes to mind). At the same time this makes the images feel like something is being documented. Not only is the scene photographed, but we know exactly when it happened.

The photographs are reminiscent of the theater of the absurd, where all the characters seem to be playing their role as if guided by external forces despite the ridiculousness of the surroundings. In some of the images there is a tinge of self-awareness where the subject realizes that something is amiss. The picture of the pigeon above where the couple stops and stares as if the bird has invaded the highly structured commercial space they inhabit. Or the picture of the cats below where the two cats staring at the third seem vaguely aware of the absurdity. Despite the vague awareness the characters in the pictures do not seem compelled at all to take any action to affect their surroundings.

Ume’s work can seem light hearted and superficial at times, but the consistency of the documentation of the absurdities she finds in everyday life suggests an attempt to find meaning in these nonsensical encounters. It is these quirky and unique juxtapositions that draw me into the work after the one-liner feeling and novelty in some of the images fades.