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The shelf
Arts Photography Publishing
Shedding light
When all else fails, let us look to the light and draw from it a
moment we shared. When it was just right, when it fell on us so
perfectly, all those little details it helped, erm, bring to light,
mummified in the well of memories. For it is here that they will
keep, as the light shifts and steals new shape. There are some
that will always remain.
camden
by Jean-Christian Bourcart
Images en Manœuvres Editions
Bourcart’s most recent publication – what
could almost be described as a photo journal –
sees him set foot into one of Americas most
malignant areas. It portrays the subject in
complete disarray, caught off guard. It’s as if
the state had just come and repossessed the
bed, the fridge, even the roof, just as he was
about to click the shutter. Q-tips litter the
floor, along with pen caps and exposed cables.
From bitter cold streets to sticky tarmac and,
every so often, a gesture, a kiss, an embrace.
This is the stuff of “shit”… All the things you
weren’t supposed to see. And to think he simply
googled “most+dangerous+city+america”,
result “Camden.”
red roses yellow rain
by Marrigje de Maar
hatje Cantz
In Red Roses Yellow Rain, Marrigje
captures the more humble abodes and their
interiors over a period of several visits to the
“Motherland”, a country rapidly hurtling
into modernisation. Here she allows us to
spy into a culture still steaming with history
and traditions. A domestic journey into
communist China and what lies behind the
wall. It’s almost like walking onto the set of a
Zhang Yimou film. The classic coral-red and
jade-green with floral flasks and pink plastic
bags taking on a form of true “minimal-decor”
all captured with that similar somber light. So
inviting are these images, one can almost smell
the tea brewing.
Writer Melisande McBurnie Photographer Stine Sampers
gone?
by Robert Adams
Steidl
In his latest book Gone?, Robert Adams
take us on a “Hansel and Gretel” journey
into the landscape of a recollection based in
Colorado. Shot in black and white, a series of
photos taken in the 1980s document the slow
evolution of a once wild region. Revisiting a
place, where as a young boy Adams walked
and the impact it now plays on reshaping
his memory, Gone? is the disappearance of
personal landmarks, of how one got from
A to B and all the little pit stops in-between.
There is something engaging upon seeing
Adams’ vast lands devoid of colour that leaves
us with an urge to fill it in, a true scrapbook
of sorts. One can’t help but want to remember
with him of how it used to be…
far Too close
by Martina Hoogland Ivanow
Steidlmack
Far Too Close entangles the boundaries
between familiar and foreign. Drawing the
viewer into something of a secret and what
lurks in its shadows, Ivanow depicts the
features of an almost faceless person, making
it near impossible to make out where one
subject ends and the other begins. Having
traveled extensively over a seven year period
to remote places such as Siberia, Sakhalin
Island and Tierra del Fuego, on the southern
tip of Argentina, the photographer sets out
to explore and capture a personal history of
“home”. The shape of sheets are here and the
place on a pillow where a head had rested.
black and White
by Ellsworth Kelly
hatje Cantz
Investigating the interplay of positive and
negative, form versus colour and the space
that surrounds us, Ellsworth Kelly brings us
back to basics. With over six decades of study
and observation into his everyday surroundings,
having first gained worldwide acclaim
for his paintings and drawings, Kelly now
presents us with Black and White. Asking the
viewers’ approach to be that of a child, who
learns from disassembling and reassembling,
the result is engaging and playful – looking
somewhat simple at first sight though closer
inspection reveals there’s an equation behind
each move, a “working out” so to speak,
a consideration of weight, balance and its
tipping point. Indeed we are left with a querying
feeling of “What came first?”
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