Catalog_Sacred_UrbanauticaInstitute_Ultimate2

sacred
the experience of beyond
GARRETTO GROVE
GEORGES SALAMEH
FYODOR TELKOV
GIACOMO ALBERICO
KELLY O’BRIEN
ROB STEPHENSON
JARED RAGLAND
Maciej Leszczynski
Polyvios Kosmatos
SIMONE D’ANGELO
FRANCESCA LUCCHITTA
BENOIT CHAILLEUX
ARNAUD TEICHER
GIAN MARCO SANNA
KURT DERUYTER
MARIA KOKUNOVA
Zoë Sluijs
Victor Schnur
JIMMY FIKE
Alessandro F. CAPRIA
WILLY VECCHIATO
SEBASTIANO RAIMONDO
DARIA NAZAROVA
CLARE O’HAGAN
ALEXIS VASILIKOS
ALESSANDRO VARACCA
Christopher Pryor
NATASHA KUEDERLI
STEFANO CANETTA
Sébastien Arrighi

“So what is sacred? That can only be understood or happen
when there is complete freedom, from fear, from sorrow,
and when there is this sense of love and compassion with
it’s own intelligence. Then when the mind is utterly still, that
which is sacred can take place.”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti

GARRETT GROVE
Georges Salameh
FYODOR TELKOV
GIACOMO ALBERICO
KELLY O’BRIEN
ROB STEPHENSON
JARED RAGLAND
Maciej Leszczynski
Polyvios Kosmatos
SIMONE D’ANGELO
FRANCESCA LUCCHITTA
Benoit Chailleux
ARNAUD TEICHER
GIAN MARCO SANNA
Kurt Deruyter
MARIA KOKUNOVA
Zoë Sluijs
Victor Schnur
JIMMY FIKE
Alessandro Furchino Capria
WILLY VECCHIATO
SEBASTIANO RAIMONDO
DARIA NAZAROVA
CLARE O’HAGAN
ALEXIS VASILIKOS
ALESSANDRO VARACCA
Christopher Pryor
Natascha Kuederli
STEFANO CANETTA
Sébastien Arrighi
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04 ‘The Edge of Some Dream’ is a photographic survey of the Western coastline
of the United States. The project begins at the Mexican border and, when
completed, will end 3,000 miles to the north, where Washington meets Canada.
The series is a study of the people, the settlements, and the natural landscapes
that are all at the westernmost edge of a country that is today mired in debates
on border walls, gun violence, economic prosperity, and environmental regulation.
As the United States grows increasingly extremist and isolated, turning inward
and finding itself, as historian Greg Grandin writes, “at the end of its myth,” I
am curious about those of us who are still drawn to the edge, to looking out,
to seeking hope and possibility when it could be so much easier to succumb
to frustration and despair. Taking refuge in the ocean is nothing new. For
Americans, the Western horizon holds the core of our ideological beginnings. In
1893 Frederick Jackson Turner noted that the frontier “was a magic fountain of
youth in which America continually bathed and was rejuvenated.” As an artist,
much of my own creative motivations are centered around the physical and
emotional sense of possibility that comes from the vastness of our country and
its geography. The Pacific Ocean speaks to this possibility in both metaphor and
visual expansiveness, and yet we have not always treated its coastline especially
well. I am curious about this paradox, the way we can be drawn to, and find
so much beauty in, something that we can simultaneously destroy, with trees
cleared and homes built on top of each other to get the best view.
The Edge of Some Dream
GARRETT GROVE
garrettgrove.com

12 ASNAM is a section of ‘Let Us Stop and Weep’, and one of those hikayat (stories).
ASNAM, in Arabic, is idol statues. In 2009, I carried out my first photographic
documentation and collection of the presence of religious statues in certain
Christian Lebanese regions. For the first time in the urban landscape, almost
20 years after I left the country and the end of civil war, big statues of Christ,
Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels, started appearing outside their usual religious
sanctuaries. I grew up in a village on the mountains of Metn and was schooled
in a Maronite christian french college. Those statues recall reproductions or
have the postures and expressions appearing on printed small holy icons, once
received as a reward for good behavior, during catechism classes.
In my next visit to Lebanon, I found in a drawer this childhood collection of holy
icons and decided to continue documenting this phenomenon with subtlety,
alienation and humor, with melancholy, but without snickering. Visit after visit,
those statues kept on increasing in number. The more this sacred appearance
populated the landscape, the more it became a territorial marker of identity,
in a general religious upmanship, but also the sign of a sincere veneration*,
a request for divine and saint protection. This newly generated collection of
statues, ASNAM, captivates me for its aesthetics and for the fact that it resonates
political, social, religious and profane issues in today’s Lebanon.
*Christians who venerate icons make an emphatic distinction between
“veneration” and “worship”. The introduction of venerable images in Christianity
was highly controversial for centuries, and in Eastern Orthodoxy the controversy
lingered until it re-erupted in the Byzantine Iconoclasm of the 8th and 9th
centuries. Religious monumental sculptures remained foreign to Orthodoxy. In
the West, resistance to idolatry delayed the introduction of sculpted images for
centuries until the time of Charlemagne, whose placing of a life-size crucifix in
the Palatine Chapel, Aachen was probably a decisive moment, leading to the
widespread use of monumental reliefs on churches, and later large statues.
Bible, Exodus 20: 3-5 3
Asnam
Georges Salameh
“You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is
in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God,
am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and
fourth generation of those who hate me.”
georgessalameh.blogspot.com

20 In 1656, at the local Council of the Russian Church, all those who were baptized
with two fingers were declared heretics by Patriarch Nikon. Persecution
began: the old believers were taxed, their books and icons were confiscated,
anathematized, imprisoned in monasteries, sent to penal servitude and exile,
beaten with whips, tortured and executed, and finally forcibly transferred to a new
rite. In response to pressure from the authorities and the official Church in the
old believers appeared even the practice of “burning” - mass self-immolation of
believers in huts. After the revolution, new dark times began: an entire generation
of believers was destroyed in the Soviet Union. The Russian Orthodox Church
old believers rehabilitated in 1971, but the religion was not encouraged by the
state prior to 1900’s. So today’s old believers are either people who inherited the
tradition from grandparents or past life of a Soviet citizen and only in the 1990s,
returning to religion, or those who managed to escape into the forest, in remote
villages — so far that power before them didn’t. Some were engaged in work
that did not require the image of an atheist Soviet citizen-thus believers could
almost do with impunity what they see fit. Within the old believers there are many
directions. Some of them do not have clergy and do not have much contact
with the authorities. The other part, on the contrary, have their own clergy. At
the end of the 18th century, there was a direction of old believers who came
under the jurisdiction of the ROC, but kept their rites. Some other old believers
do not recognize this direction. They are also in a complex relationship: there
are significant ceremonial differences between them, and most importantlyunsolvable
religious disputes. This project is a visual study of various consents
and closed communities of modern old believers, where the continuity of tradition
is supported by visual references.
Right to believe
FYODOR TELKOV
fyodortelkov.ru

28
‘Medhelan’, or “middle ground” or “middle sanctuary” is the oldest name given
to the city of Milan. According to the legend in 590 A.C. the priests of a Celtic
tribe of the Insubri population were guided by divine signs that led them to a
marshy area, near the present Piazza della Scala, where they created a sanctuary.
Following propitiatory rites and the recognition of sacred signs in this area, the
first inhabited center was established which gave life to the city of Medhelan.
In ancient times, to justify and legitimately base the appropriation of a space
that was completely taken away from the dominion of nature, a divine origin
was sanctioned for its own stable settlement so as to directly involve the gods
in the fate of the city. The project, influenced by the legend of the origin of the
city, wants to reflect on the transitory nature of the elements that make up an
urban environment in constant change. The photographs taken in the space of
the historic center show a place inhabited and stratified over time by religions,
symbolisms and different populations. Medhelan thus becomes the image of a
city populated by people who, by changing what they have around, are showing
traces of an arcane past.
Medhelan
GIACOMO ALBERICO
giacomoalberico.com

36
There was just a single moment of near contact with my father when I was 7
years old; as his hand suddenly reached through the letterbox of my mother’s
front door. He died 8 years after this brief encounter took place. It would not
be another 12 years until I would learn of his death, from the mouth of my
grandmother as we wandered through the aisles of our local supermarket.
Over the proceeding years, discovering information about this abstract man
proved near impossible - with family members only revealing fragments of who
he might have been and what he might have been like. In an attempt to uncover
this immaterial man I collaborate with clairvoyants to trace an impression of
my estranged father. The information gathered is translated within a visual
framework where psychic drawings, automated writing and attempts to
communicate with my farther are integrated.
This work explores the notion of perspective and what arises in the absence of
evidence for the creation of truth. All characters involved in this searching provide
subjective, distinct, self-serving and often contradictory versions of the same
narrative, developing a fractured story that is constructed in co-creation with the
mediums involved. The findings are rooted in both fact and fiction where what is
revealed is a reimagined landscape that enables me to construct a sacred yet lost
relationship. The project is both multifaceted and fractured, visually reflecting the
reality of the situation it aims to communicate. The work looks upon dynamics in
family relations, including hidden histories and the various ways both avoidance
and the denial of death is manifested within such narratives.
Are You There
Kelly O’Brien
kellyanneobrien.com

44
When the Great Migration brought thousands of African Americans north to New
York City, newly formed urban congregations took root mostly in vacant buildings,
storefronts or private homes. Over time these buildings were modified to more
closely resemble traditional churches though these adaptations were restricted
by the limitations of the original architecture and small budgets. Through signs,
crosses, and other adaptions these storefront houses of worship differentiate
themselves from their neighbors. They also serve as an architectural record of
change.
Storefronts and Synagogues
Rob Stephenson
robstephenson.com

52 ‘Where You Come From is Gone’ explores the sacrality of place, the passage of
time, and the political dimensions of remembrance through the historical wetplate
collodion photographic process. Created during the state of Alabama’s
bicentennial celebration with collaborative partner Cary Norton, the large scale
images seek to make known a history that has largely been eliminated and make
visible the erasure that occurred in the American South between Hernando
DeSoto’s first exploitation of native peoples in the 16th century and Andrew
Jackson’s Indian Removal Act 300 years later.
Using a 100-year-old field camera and a custom portable darkroom tailored to a
4x4 truck, Norton and I have journeyed more than 3,000 miles across 30 Alabama
counties to locate, visit, and photograph indigenous sites. Yet the melancholy
landscapes hold no obvious vestiges of the Native American cultures that once
inhabited the sites; what one would hope to document, hope to preserve, hope
to remember, is already gone. Instead, the photographs deliberately document
absence and seek to render the often invisible layers of culture and civilization,
creation and erasure, and the man-made and natural character of the landscape.
The result is a body of landscape photographs in which the subject matter seems
to exist outside of time, despite the fact that the project is explicitly about the
passage of time, the slippage of memory, and the burying of history.
While the relative emptiness of the landscapes elicits a sense of loss or absence,
the beauty of the photographs conveys a continued sacrality of the space and
puts viewers in touch with history and memory, helping us not only to imagine
what may have been but also how best to honor what is, and what has been lost.
Where You Come From is Gone
Jared Ragland
jaredragland.com

60 The series Churches of Zulawy depicts the interiors of medieval, small Gothic
churches located in the Zulawy region in Poland. Zulawy is the alluvial delta area
of Vistula, in the northern part of Poland. From the Middle Ages to the information
age, such objects were the only place of contact with art, in this case, sacred
art, and designed space for most people living in these areas. This series is a
systematic attempt at artistic documentation of these objects of architecture
and the art present in them. It is also an examination of the way that architecture
expresses the history and identity of society.
Churches of Zulawy
Maciej Leszczynski
maciejleszczynski.com

68 Holy Sundays. Captured strands of family moments, all numbered one by one.
12 photos on film.
12 meetings of people related to each other and either they recognize their
relation whilom their relation introduce itself once again.
They embrace their fears when else the feeling of adulthood feels a distant
dream. Every time I’ve returned to my home place, the place I grew up, it was
always a new acquaintance with people that I’ve already known. Every capture a
new strand of themselves. Every capture a hidden face.
12 Sundays
Polyvios Kosmatos
polyvioskosmatos.com

76 1912. After the conquest of Lybia, the Italian government was in the need of an
explosive factory away from the borders with France and Austria. Two Italian
entrepreneurs – Leopoldo Parodi Delfino and Giovanni Bombrini – chose an
abandoned sugar factory in Sacco Valley, an area south of Rome, as the perfect
place to convert in an explosive factory. The open of B.P.D. and the arrival of
many skilled workers from the northern part of Italy turned the area in a new
“factory town”, then called Colleferro in 1935. During the WW2, Allied bombing
hit the factory. Therefore 1500 people moved permanently in the shelters: 6
kilometers of tunnels under the town. Today arms factories in the valley are still
operating and they naturally evolved in aerospace research, with the current
leadership of Avio Spazio company. Santabarbara – from the patron Saint name
of Colleferro and the name typically given to ammunition dumps – is research
that combines archival materials with a personal and subjective vision, in order to
mark and cross the boundaries of an Italian arms industry story.
Santabarbara
SIMONE D’ANGELO
simonedangelo.it

84 The fire burn the past, delete the remains, symbolizes purification, hopes and
regeneration. The smoke moved by the wind give indication of the future year.
The ashes, scattered in the field, push away curses and ensure abundant crops.
Bonfire rituals happening on the 5th and 6th of January in the north-east of Italy
are a strong deeply-rooted tradition that is centuries old and which celebrate
seasonal cycles, life and death. The event takes place in fields around cities
and villages where there is a strong existing community taking care of it. All the
people involved are volunteers, they “do it for the community” and they think
–“it’s a good celebration, it makes us feel united”. Since a few weeks before the
event, the people involved collect the materials (old vegetation, hay, corn canes,
evergreen and aromatic juniper) and only a few days before they assemble them
in the traditional shape. Each group uses specific construction techniques to
raise the ‘sculpture’, that vary in relation to the area, and are passed on between
generations. Burning is the main moment of the feast. Hours of work that burn
in one night. The fire that gets lit at the base quickly rise up the sculpture in the
dark. It will be the wind that night to predict the future of the year. «Se il fum
al va a soreli a mont, cjape il sac e va pal mont. Se il fum al va a soreli jevât,
cjape il sac e va al marcjât» (“If the smoke goes west, take the sack and go to
the world. If the smoke goes east, take the sack and go to the market.») The
every year repeated ritual becomes a moment of identification. In a period of
social changing it is a practice with spatial and temporal continuity that keeps a
community together. Even if the meaning of these rituals have changed due to the
societal evolution, their ongoing existence represent a moment of togetherness.
It reflects the necessity to take distance from the digital, abstract and parallel
reality faced by the contemporary society. The smell of the burned remains of the
past stays impregnates on the clothes for days, and enduring is also the image
and the sound of the cracking branches of vegetations. The fire, less and less
present in our houses and lives, remain an attractive archaic element that make
us feel a nostalgic ‘sense of community’.
Rites of passage
FRANCESCA LUCCHITTA
instagram.com/francesca.lucchitta

92 Religious buildings, statues, monuments occupy public space in the same way
as street furniture, advertisements and road signs. These figures were once
to impress and remind the faithful of the existence of God. Serious, imposing,
they are frozen in time, but today denote with contemporary urban elements.
These anachronistic monuments struggle to keep their authority, among electric
poles, signposts and advertisements. Religious symbols compete with logos and
traffic signs in the modern city. Very graphic, slender, perched on pedestals, they
participate in the race for visibility in the forest of signs, maintaining a dialogue
with today’s communication codes. The gravity of the Christ figure is often
altered and made obsolete by the elements present in the contemporary city. This
series attempts to highlight the meaninglessness of these religious icons in the
modern city.
Modern Love
Benoit Chailleux
benoitchailleux.com

100 I spent part of my childhood at the foot of the Cheval Blanc mountain in the
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department of southeastern France. While hiking,
it wasn’t uncommon to find debris from two planes of US Air Force that had
crashed here in 1948. A Douglas Dakota C-47 and a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
On summer evenings, we would play on a large boulder in the middle of a field.
In the valley, it was known as the “extraterrestrial rock”. Much later, while doing
research online, I stumbled across an article by Spanish ufologist claiming that
the Cheval Blanc mountain was chosen by an alien civilisation, called the «
Ummites » to be their terrestrial base.
One day, I went walking near the summit of the Cheval Blanc, where a circular
structure over 4 meters high has been used as an astronomical observatory since
the early 2000s. Inside, I didn’t find any measuring instruments or a telescope,
but I did find an aluminum rod firmly planted in the ground. What really lay under
my feet? My investigation began, guiding me through the valley’s trails, villages,
forests, and stories. Two years later, I have discovered a territory that’s very
different than the one I thought I knew. I met unique individuals and experienced
the passing of time. I learned that the mountains are governed by specific rules.
I accepted the questions without answers. The truth may lie elsewhere, but I’ll
keep searching for it.
Dakota C47
Arnaud Teicher
arnaudteicher.com

108 When walking along the shores of Lake Bolsena one is made aware of its
distinctive and particular ambience. The water with its many colors and sounds,
all of which play a crucial part in the natural cycle of the lake, its flora and
fauna. The lake, a fascinating and mysterious place, over which many myths
and legends hover. There are several stories about people going missing on the
lake, and never found. The most recent was in 2007, when a man and his young
children simply disappeared and were never found. Widely held beliefs take us
back to the legend of “The Gate of Agarthi” a mythical place located on Bisentina
Island, one of only two islands on the lake. Bisentina is believed to be the point
of contact between “terra firma” and its mythical parallel - the legendary inner
- earth kingdom of Agarthi - described in the work of the author Willis George
Emerson (1856 - 1918). Emerson’s conceptualization was linked to the theory of
“Terra Cava” (Hollow Earth), a very popular subject in the field of esotericism and
literature, as expounded by Dante Alighieri, who allegedly descended amongst
the chosen-few, in order to explore the underground kingdom, and receive its
energy called VRYL. I have worked on the mystery of Bolsena and on its legends,
investigating among reality and fantasy. The work is based on the territory
of Etruria that could be a point of passage, the “Door, of passage” towards
something of indefinite and mysterious. The Etruscans considered the Bisentina
island (situated in the middle of the lake) the spiritual heart of the entire Etruscan
nation that guards their secrets.
Agarthi
GIAN MARCO SANNA
gianmarcosanna.com

116
After decades of decline, Sufism is again gaining ground and followers, both
in the muslim sphere of the world as in the diaspora communities of the West.
Sufism, known as tasawwuf in the Arabic-speaking world, is a form of Islamic
mysticism that emphasises introspection and spiritual closeness with God. While
it is sometimes misunderstood as a sect of Islam, it is actually a broader style of
worship that transcends sects, directing followers’ attention inward. Sufis can be
found all over the Muslim world, in the Sunni and Shiite heartlands as well as in
remoter corners of the Islamic universe.
I travelled to some regions where sufism traditionally played an important role in
both the religious and political history. Mainly to understand better who they are
and how modern sufism is influencing life in these countries and how they deal
with this spiritual heritage. I researched this in Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Senegal
and Uzbekistan where I met sufis and talked to them about the importance
of Islam in their life. While travelling in this spiritual universe, I was especially
touched by the devotion of most people I met, their relentless spiritual search
to better themselves, while all the time staying in touch with our modern rapidly
evolving world. Every follower seeks to get closer to God by acquiring spiritual
learning. This learning, this quest is also known as ‘the Way’, the ‘Tariqa’.
Not in Happiness,
nor in Sorrow am I found
Kurt Deruyter
kurtderuyter.com

124
The cave has been the first most famous form of habitation since Paleolithic and
has become a symbol of shelter, home. It was viewed as a sacred place in the
most ancient myths and was compared to a mini cosmos. It was the birthplace
of the gods and there they went to die, initiates were taught sacred knowledge
there. Our ancestors viewed the cave as the beginning of the world, the Womb of
the Universe. The notion of the cave has been connected with the Anima and the
cult of the Earth-Mother, the symbol of fertile soil that gives lives and takes away.
Plato’s Cave was the starting point for the whole metaphysics and became the
seminal idea for the European mentality. In the modern age F. Bacon, developing
the idea of Plato, stated that the “idols of the cave” arise from education and
custom, the past of each individual person - all those determine how we perceive
things.
In psychoanalysis, a cave represents a symbol of regressive desires and of
the unconscious. As for me, isolation in my own cave triggered a childhood
trauma that had not been resolved emotionally (had not been fully overcome) - a
stress disorder after a series of four deaths and suicide in the family over a very
short period of time. The secluded setting of a country house resurrected the
memories of tension in the family and of the pompous and theatrical provincial
funeral. Along with that an inadequate connection with the external environment
caused an increase in anxiety, and the children contributed to my irritability by
continuously violating personal boundaries.
As a result, I started to experience problems with self-control, there came the
sense of inadequacy: I would not go out in the fear of having an accident, I was
scared of the future, the bursts of uncontrollable anger were happening more
often and I started to regularly take my anger out on my husband and the kids
with the guilt and regret to follow. In the project I am constructing my personal
cave: I am combining the photos I made in my parents’ house, the place of the
fears I had not overcome, in the region of Kuban with the pictures of the place I
am living in at the moment; I am recording the experience of a physical presence
in Sablinskiye Caves situated near our house in Ulyanovka.
The Cave
MARIA KOKUNOVA
mariakokunova.com

132 My work has often been about the relationship that humanity has with nature, but
this time I chanced perspective and looked at the relationship nature has with
humanity. People, sometimes unconsciously, still have the idea of being the most
important thing in the world. This idea stems from religions where it is believed
that we are created and that the world is made for us.
Despite the fact that more and more people take Darwin’s theory of evolution as
the truth, we still behave as the owner of the world and we hold nature as ‘our’
sacred place. Because mankind is just one of the millions of organisms on Earth,
it would be strange to say that we are more important than all the others. In fact,
we are all equally unimportant. Nature knows no emotion and has no ideals. In an
interview done by Wim Kayzer in 1993, Oliver Sacks says the following: “Nature is
amoral. I have to admit that this is one of the reasons why I love nature, because
it frees me from the moral consciousness that is sometimes such a burden.”.
With this, Sacks highlights an important difference between humanity and nature.
We are moral beings and it can be a liberating idea to let go of that morality,
but to let go of it will never be anything but an idea. This is partly due to our
consciousness. The lack thereof in nature makes it possible to be amoral and
therefore to be indifferent to humanity. This indifference became undeniably clear
during scientific research on consciousness within the rock in the 90’s.
My book tells the story of geologist Alex R. Flint, who recorded her thoughts
during this time. You can tell what her relationship was with the material by
reading the dialogues she recorded. And although the research came to an end
without a sign of life, Flint still couldn’t shake the idea of the rock being aware
of what they were doing. The story of Flint and her colleges illustrates the lack
of understanding we have regarding nature as well as the obsession we have for
understanding it. But some things should be left to be mysterious.
Possibility of life and consciousness
within rock
Zoë Sluijs
zoesluijs.nl

140
Just after WWII’s bombings Milano, my own town, was completely in ruins…
and, at the same time, about to accommodate one of the biggest migratory
movements of the century. Hundreds of thousands of workers were moving
from southern Italy to the wealthy north, and they were missing houses, sure,
but also churches: masses were celebrated in improvised sheds, often built with
Asbestos.
The Catholic Church, therefore, set up one of the most impressive building
efforts of her recent history, building, in slightly more than a decade, dozens of
new churches. Nowadays a ring of about 100 of those surrounds the center of
Milan. I‘ve always been struck by those buildings, and, as a non-christian, I’ve
always tried to understand how that huge concrete (both in a metaphorical and a
literal sense) blocks could represent the house of God on hearth, or the doors to
transcendence for humanity.
Between 2014 and 2015, as part of a bigger project, I’ve hence mapped and
photographed all these churches, together with their oratories, their furniture,
and the handful of believers that still attended them. In the process, I’ve learned
that some of these churches are architectural masterpieces while others are
distortions, sketches or manglings of the original projects… some are imposing,
others are modest, some look threatening, others funny. Put together it’s hardly
understandable if they speak the language of a dystopian future or the one of a
utopian past. Probably a mix of both.
Certainly, they’re a testimony of the past of the city, but also of its present, and
maybe of our future: the aim of this investigation isn’t to make a point merely
on one city, but to use Milano as a gateway, or a metaphor, to speak about
spirituality in our age, and about the ways it manifests itself, both stoically and
materially. Here a small selection of pictures from the project.
An investigation on transcendence
Victor Schnur
victorschnur.com

148
J.W. Fike’s Photographic Survey of
the Wild Edible Botanicals of the
North American Continent;
Plates in Which the Edible Parts of
the Specimen Have Been Illustrated
in Color
Jimmy Fike
Since 2007, I’ve been creating a photographic archive depicting America’s rich
trove of wild edible flora. The project has taken me to fifteen different states, so
far, and I’ve amassed a collection of over one hundred and forty specimens. The
work sprung from a disillusionment with the position of landscape photography
in relation to pressing threats like climate change, extinction, pollution, alienation
and the loss of commons. Too often, the genre traffics in the aesthetics of nature
instead of the inner workings of ecology. To address these problems, I felt a
radically different artistic strategy was necessary. The resulting series; ‘J.W.
Fike’s Photographic Survey of the Wild Edible Botanicals of the North American
Continent; Plates in Which the Edible Parts of the Specimen have been Illustrated
in Color’ seemed a promising vein of work that satisfied the new critical criteria I
set for landscape-based artwork.
By employing a system that makes it easy to identify both the plant and its
edible parts, the images function as reliable guides for foraging. This concrete,
functional aspect of the project directs viewers to free food that can be used for
sustenance, or as raw material for creative economies. The seemingly objective
style of the images references early contact prints from the dawn of photography
(Henry Fox Talbot, Anna Atkins) when photography’s verisimilitude proved a
promising form of scientific illustration for taxonomical undertakings. Beyond
functionality, I try to construct images that operate on multiple levels theoretically
and perceptually. Upon longer viewing the botanicals begin to transcend the
initial appearance of scientific illustration – they writhe and pulsate trying to
communicate with you about their edible parts while hovering over an infinite
black expanse. This opticality becomes a physiological parallel to the chemical
effects of ingesting the plants and opens up a mystical space for contemplation,
communion and meditation. The scientific yields to something spiritual and
sacred as the viewer begins to experience our symbiotic evolution with the plant
kingdom.
This work offers a dose of something palliative for the ills of alienation – a sense
of connection to a certain place, a certain ecosystem, a type of belonging. With
this in mind, I plan on continuing the survey until I’ve amassed an expansive
enough cross-section of the botanical life on the continent to mount biomespecific
exhibitions anywhere within the continental United States. After years
of work of hard work, I’m excited to be approaching this goal. I hope the
photographic survey can serve as a historical archive of botanical life during an
era of extreme change, and provide viewers all over the country an opportunity
to feel the type of sacred bond with their landscapes that will encourage health,
engender wonder, help identify free food, and most importantly, inspire greater
concern for environmental issues.
jimmyfike.com

156
A series of 15 photographs selected from a larger series from an investigation
about the aediculae in the Italian Peninsula about the Virgin Mary.
Through a documentary approach, the series returns a point of view about these
small shrines that are left all over Italy. Probably nothing more than a piece of
history of our ancient culture. Yet, it’s true that the sacred dimension is inherent
in the human experience; dating back to the origins of man, as in the apotropaic
rites to ward o the “bad luck”, or the manifestations of parietal art linked to the
propitiation of hunting. The function of these aediculae is to absolve the sense of
devotion to the divinity, as the Virgin Mary in this series, and to avoid the sense of
perdition that every human being can feel during his life.
A light in the night for every religious person as a reference point in the existence.
Edicole, Maria
Alessandro Furchino
Capria
alessandrofurchinocapria.com

164
The Mother, the one who, like me, ate the earth of the asylum, believing it to be
divine pasture, the one who tied herself at the feet of her son to be dragged with
him on the cross and was released from it to continue living in her pain.
- Alda Merini
Full of Grace
WILLY VECCHIATO
willyvecchiato.com

172
This sequence is part of a project dedicated to the city of Naples. It is a small
selection of images of my experience as lived in the city, a sequence whose
genesis is connected to encounters, readings, studies and imaginary stories upon
which I mirrored myself following coincidences with my interests and real life.
It all started with an invitation from a Neapolitan friend to propose again, after
thirty years, a project conceived and commissioned by Cesare de Seta between
the years of 1981 to 1985, a new image of the city with different objectives and
personal ways of reading by each invited author.
I lived in the city for about two years, from 2014 to 2015, very frequently travelling
by ships departed from Sicily, my homeland. These trips passed through places
whose toponymy coincided with the places of the Homeric encounter of Ulysses
and the mermaids. As time went by, my image of the city took the form of a
winged mermaid’s body. Traces that still exist, objects and contemporary images
made me understand that the cult of the mermaid Parthenope still resists to
this day in literature, in theatre, in young people’s rites and places of Christian
worship.
The photographs collect fragments of this undefinable frontier between real
and imaginary; they may be necessary traces for other encounters between
travellers and mermaids. These are my corresponding images to the symbolic
meaning of that Homeric encounter. When we are certain to be on reality’s side,
as the photographic mean suggests, someone inside us whispers that what we
are seeing is a reflected image, an apparent window from where we observe the
world, but also where, if looking carefully, we find our own contained image. The
mermaids are not, therefore, in the images, but in the silence of the photographs.
The encounter with these mythical women, since the time of Ulysses, may show
us the journey we went through and the roads amongst which we must choose to
carry on.
Today, I live in another country, one that I frequented before living in Naples, but
only after this experience I may comprehend how to continue the project in this
new city, Lisbon, whose name in the Roman age was dedicated to Ulysses.
The Mermaids Inside
SEBASTIANO RAIMONDO
instagram.com/uma_ponte
presenteinfinito.it/sebastiano-raimondo-bio

180
At least three generations of my family: the cousins ​of my great-grandmothers and
great-grandfathers, their parents and grandfathers, were all church officials. Most
of them were repressed. This tradition was interrupted. My grandmother hasn’t told
anything about her father, but I never asked.
I can’t remember how I’ve learned about him. Perhaps it was when I first saw an
album with old family photographs. On most photos people were dressed in clergy.
The images imprinted into my mind. Many years later
I found that album, but it was almost empty. My quest began.
When I was a child, and my grandmother was an elderly woman, she was
constantly drawn to the same place - Nikola Ez. We went there several times with
her and our relatives. All that remained there was a dilapidated temple, where my
great-grandfather had served, and a cemetery nearby. At the place where once
was a pier, below the Volga, there was a barge moored to the shore. She wandered
around the church, remembered and probably saw something we would never be
able to reach.
My great-grandfather, Alexei Nikolayevich Potekhin, was arrested on January 7,
1938, sentenced by the “troika” to the death penalty and executed in 4 days. By
this time he had already left the family so as not to endanger anyone. I wanted to
get closer to my great-grandfather somehow, to the history of the family, to find
and feel the connection with them, so I went to Nikola Ez - the place where my
grandmother was born. I saw that now there is almost nothing left. In some places
you can see basements of houses - a children’s camp was built on this place in
Soviet times, and nothing has remained from village houses. Trees sprout through
the walls of the temple. The forest grows where the family house was and in the
district where people lived. Job 8:13-14 “Such is the destiny of all who forget God;
so the hope of the godless will perish. His confidence is fragile; his security is in a
spider’s web.”
The spider’s House
Daria Nazarova
nazarovadaria.com

188
Observing increased plastic pollution along the shoreline on the Greek Island of
Paros the artist Clare O Hagan felt compelled to take action. In the land of Greek
legend, O Hagan reimagines the Goddess Keto and fashions her form from a rock
found on Paros together with plastic debris collected from the shoreline. The
work defines a new mythology, discoverable through Keto’s imagined ancient
artifacts, assemblage and prints fashioned by the artist. Keto’s quest to attend
to the destruction of the ocean is supported by a network of Goddesses whose
mythological stories are re-interpreted and informed by the artist’s feminist
viewpoint.
The artist’s view: “My aim as an artist is to create meaningful relevant work.
‘Keto, Goddess of the Sea’ aims to draw attention to, and calls to action in
reversing the destruction of the oceans by plastic waste. Keto came to me one
early morning whilst sitting on a sea cliff edge, watching kestrels fledge on the
Greek Island of Paros. Being a frequent visitor there, and newly arrived after a
storm, it was shocking to see the beaches on the walk to the cliffs polluted with
plastic waste. After collecting the rubbish to dispose of later, I sat surrounded by
it on the cliff edge.
Looking out over the Aegean Sea sprinkled with tiny islands, the morning mist
rising, I imagined that being in Greece, the land of the Gods, there must be one who
could give us a hand now to sort out this plastic pollution. I went off to find one
and I did, her name is Keto - Goddess of the dangers of the sea. I was reluctant at
first to name Keto a Goddess. The term goddess is, I believe, devalued in Englishspeaking
contemporary society. In Greece it contains all the weight bore during the
time of the matriarchy. In modern Greek, as a metaphor, it would mean a beautiful
and capable woman. On finding a rock resembling an ancient Greek theatre mask
I felt compelled to make Keto real. With this mask and an assemblage of plastic
waste collected from the shoreline - Keto came into being at the Environmental and
Cultural Archeological Park, Paros, Greece on the morning of 27th June 2017.
To add weight to the Keto legend I embedded her in an imagined mythological
past by creating a series of iconographic images, referencing Paros. We see Keto’s
image embedded in rock beneath our feet, emeshed in a window in Pariokia town,
Keto - Goddess of the Sea
CLARE O’ HAGAN
wyllieohagan.com

196
‘Little Chapel Compositions’ is a series of images that started in the summer
of 2013 on the island of Leros in Greece. I’ve always enjoyed the presence of
sacredness of these sites, often built at the ruins of ancient temples in remote
places on the edges of the island. The simplicity of the architecture of the little
chapels is a humble manifestation of love for the divine, usually built and looked
after by devotees, as an offering to God. In this series, the focus is on minimum
units of matter, structural elements, textures, and details.
Little Chapel Compositions
Alexis Vasilikos
alexisvasilikos.net

204 Religion is a human expression based on the unbreakable bond between our
self and consciousness, knowledge and existence. In particular, the mutualism
between creed’s materialization (rituals and symbolism) and society is perhaps
one of the most fascinating aspects of this complex relationship. Like many of us,
we were all born into a religion, accustomed from childhood to traditions, rituals,
and symbols, which our eyes and mind have often perceived and accepted inertly.
A sort of pre-packaged bundle that is given to us at birth, with all the answers
at hand. A Euclidean geometry where the answers are certain and the axioms
incontrovertible and in which the whole community recognizes and reflects itself,
because society and religion are each other, mutually emanation and creation.
These premises have led me to explore the anthropological implications of
such a phenomenon. An investigation free of judgment, with the sole goal of
diving into and depicting a condition from which no one is exempt, not even
those professing atheism. Just as our lives have been more or less consciously
marked by the religious calendar through commanded holidays, so we have
found ourselves in a landscape profoundly altered by religious manifestations.
Think about it. Is there any mountain without a cross planted on top? Is there any
square with no sacred images? Is there any house with no crucifix or holy cards?
Is there a village in the lower Po Valley without its “Don Camillo’s” church? If you
happen to live in a Christian society, you might safely guess the answer is “no”.
My journey in search of these visible signs, places, and icons starts from this very
awareness. There is no denying such artifacts can tell a great deal about the ethos
of our religion-rooted culture, much more than philosophy would. As the saying
goes, if the philosopher is the lover of Doubt, the priest is the prophet of Truth.
Interestingly, not even in the crafty Western World do we stop dealing with the
pervasiveness of this human expression. Indeed, the supposedly secular thirdmillennium
society often strives to maintain a fragile balance between faith and
laicism. As a result, we constantly witness the creation of new iconographies, often
poised between sacred and profane. Since modern communities now manage
religious references and symbols much more comfortably and cynically, more and
more people dare to cross over into satire as a sign of intellectual freedom.
At the other end of the spectrum we find orthodoxy, the expression of a stoic naïve
niche that resists change to a great extent, though its modern declinations often
generate awkward contrasts with a kitsch flavour. This collection of images tries to
portray how our beliefs become part of the landscape, whether extemporaneous
or planned and reasoned. These manifestations transform the ordinary into
extraordinary, enclosing local or regional characteristics that make them strongly
identified with the historical and geographical context they come from. Therefore,
there is no pretension to evaluate faith, beauty, sincerity or hypocrisy. Instead, the
only goal here is documenting reality, a world in which many people can recognize
themselves but on which, perhaps, they have never dwelt so much.
New Topography of Creed
ALESSANDRO VARACCA
alessandrovaracca.myportfolio.com

212 In a world exhaustively google-mapped, surveyed, and charted, there are
left, seemingly, few frontiers between worlds known and unknown. These
photographs explore the liminal spaces of the remote village of Jerusalem/
Hiruharama on the Whanganui River, New Zealand. Here indigenous Maori
spirituality sits comfortably along aside the Catholic religion of the colonists. Here
the traditions that mediate people and nature have never been broken - deriving
their spirit and identity the river, the Maori people of the Whanganui maintain, ‘Ko
au te awa. Ko te awa ko au’ (I am the river. The river is me). No map can convey
the significance of this terrain. Having lived for a year in Jerusalem/Hiruharama to
make the film ‘How Far is Heaven’, we (my wife and I) eagerly return as often as
possible, on pilgrimage, back to the place and to the people who have become so
dear to us - and indeed, for this still-evolving series of photographs, pilgrimage
is one of the work’s central themes. Of particular interest is the “transformative
consequence of pilgrimage”, which, as Robert Macfarlane tells us “...turns
the mind back upon itself, leaving the traveler both ostensibly unchanged and
profoundly redirected.”
T. (The Problem of Seeing)
Christopher Pryor
deerheart.co.nz

220 The theme of heaven, as described in the Old and New Testaments, fascinates
me. In Hebrew, heaven is always expressed in the plural form, Heavens. There
are seven distinct names ascribed to the heavens in Hebrew writings: Dok, Rakia,
Shechakim, Zevul, Machon and Aravot. These are listed in the glossary of “The
One New Man Bible” by William J. Morford, which he wrote in close cooperation
with Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, grandson of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, whose life’s
work made modern Hebrew the national language of Israel. In the New Testament
Paul mentions the third heaven: “I know a man who was in Messiah more than
fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know, God knows, or outside
the body, I do not know, this one was taken away up to the third heaven.” 2
Corinthians 12:2 (One New Man Bible) In my photo-collage series Heavens, I
show all kinds of moods, colours and cloud formations with the aim of giving
a feeling, a possible condition or an insight into the various celestial levels. In
Truth, however, heaven is a mystery. We won’t know what heaven really looks like
unless we see it for ourselves!
Heavens
Natascha Kuederli
nataschakuederli.com

228 ‘Alte Vie’ (High Routes) is a collection of photos taken during my hikes in the
woods where I grew up and in the surrounding mountains: Valle Intrasca and
Valdossola in northern Piedmont. The need that led me to take these photos and
to put them together is primarily visual, but in their relationship, I could discover
other aspects that touch me closely. I am fascinated by those old paintings,
produced by popular painters, “images before the society of images”, because
they testify of life along the paths that I still walk today: I like to imagine that
(at least in some cases) the inhabitants of those places have posed for those
paintings.
I am also interested in representing the degradation of the images produced by
man, both to save his memory, and to represent the impermanence of earthly
things and thus the return to the stone of those images. Mountains and rock
mounds have a physical and spiritual symbolism at the same time: combining
them with the images produced by man serves me to express the need for
transcendent, which I consider innate in human beings. If rock is a matter, the
flesh of which we are made, the paintings represent human beings and our need
for infinity, which becomes concrete in the need to produce and see images to
give meaning to existence.
Alte Vie
STEFANO CANETTA
stefanocanetta.com

236 It is in the manner of a poetic joust (love song) that Sébastien Arrighi has
maintained an intimate conversation with the landscape of his native island
(Corsica) since 2016. As if he had to greet them after a long separation, Sébastien
rediscovers the scenes that are viewed through his large-format camera. As a rediscoverer,
he combines his experience of the territory with various explorations
far from the cities, far from the new forms of life that are emerging on the island
and threatens its enchantment. This is almost a mystical vision of Corsica,
in its most discreet appearance, reveals a form of kindness to the world that
seems to disappear in favour of new material, economic and social conditions.
The delimited space in which these different scenes are played out, far from
being neutral, questions how we behave in and interact within the world. The
landscape bears traces and reveals remains of past decisions rather than burying
them under new spaces. It offers a variety of possibilities to educate about the
landscape of a population in a crisis of attention. It is in this sense that Sébastien
maintains a connection with the landscape and tries to capture its movements,
the particular relationships that are made of sensations and feelings provoked by
a being of a particular kind, the landscape itself.
Correspondance
Sébastien Arrighi
sebastienarrighi.com

Special thanks to all the people who have contributed to the call
Sacred. The experience of Beyond

Sacred - the experience of beyond
© All images presented here are the sole property of the contributing artist
© Urbanautica Institute for this edition
© Alexis Vasilikos, courtesy of Can Christina Androulidaki Gallery
Urbanautica Institute
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