Wander through the here and now

As an image creator, I explore transformations. From the transformations I encounter in my own life to the transformations I discover and harness during various creative processes.

Transformations take place in the liminal phase, a transitional phase between one form and another. In the in-between, no one knows what they will find on the other side. The human brain is programmed to seek safety and security. Because the liminal phase is fraught with uncertainty, it can feel uncomfortable, a phase to hurry through as quickly as we can.

However, the liminal phase is just as much a phase of growth and transformation. A place of reflection, rest, stillness and silence. I seek to capture that stillness in my creations by shooting landscapes, nature scenes and self-portraits.

I experiment with various shapes, methods and processes, imbuing every image with its own unique form. My work encourages wandering and invites viewers to embrace the present, where there is nowhere to be and nowhere to go.

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Website: marleendalhuijsen.com

Instagram: @photography.bymarleen

 

Mom’s Body As Vehicle For Narratives

Analysing and Re-appropriating Dad’s Snapshots. This installation derived from analysing and selecting similar patterns in my family photo albums. These albums contain mainly snapshots taken by my Dad, (mostly) of my Mom, over a period of two to three decades.

The emphasis is not on aesthetics, it is a personal and authentic documentation of many vacations, and daily life happenings, set in a liberal western culture. The significance for showcasing this personal project is to display a basic story of love and admiration, yet it also exhibits universal themes such as social frameworks, banalities, old fashioned stereotypes, and at times a hint of bittersweet lonesomeness.

These narratives would remain invisible within the context of the family albums. As part of an installation, the photos shift in concept from individual to collective memories. New connotations surface by juxtaposing and combining photos of different origins. The undertone of this personal project is figuring out a bit of an unconventional relationship between my parents, and how that has shaped me…

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Website: mardoepainter.com

Instagram: @mardoepainter

Delta 

In No Man’s Land, where the marriage between Heaven and Hell is celebrated, that is where Rennes’ gaze arrives. To be honest, to Rennes the mountain does not exist; it’s just a pretext. As soon as it is framed, it transforms instantly into all the mountains, into the multitude, to which individuality cannot in any way be assimilated, except in statistical terms – as belonging to the species.  

Rennes’ images, without domination or acquiescence, establish the provisional nature of the meeting point between two subjects, the artist and the mountain, between the reasons of the visible and the invisible, but always starting from what is brought to the light. In the context of a representation that returns to be a presentation, no object is a fact.  

In a perpetual cross-reference of mirrors, the subject is a witness to the work and establishes its residual capacity to exist. Rennes limits himself to carrying out the thankless task of noting the continuous transformation within the infinite variants of a living life, choosing one of the possible pieces of the mosaic. This attempt mocks the static nature of the genre, dealing with chaos, giving it some semblance of order, beyond any give and take. 

Text written by Paolo Donazzolo, translated by Frédéric Rennes

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Instagram: @Angoissedespace 

Welcome to “Fieldkapelle”  

The work shows the result of a collaboration between filmmaker Robbe Maes and theater director Reynout Dekimpe. Self-made miniatures served as a model for a semi-fictional world.  

The artwork shows a village in the 1990s. A collection of still lives show a scenery of faded glory.  The artists named their village “Veldkapelle”. This town is a historically independent municipality  with only 934 inhabitants. It enjoys modest tourism through scenic cycle paths and authentic  bars. When welcoming foreigners to their town, the (fictional) inhabitants tend to loosely translated their hometown as “Fieldkapelle”.  

The village seems immune to the fast-changing times. The photos show enigmatic scenes that  invite personal interpretation. Small details add a humorous touch. The images take us back to  collective memories. It’s an ode to the childhood of millennials. A time when your family’s holiday  started with hours of driving along paved roads and numerous detours due to a wrongly read  road-map. 

The optical illusions which a diorama evokes is an artisan way of taking the viewer into a  cinematic universe. The photographs present a challenge to look at reality differently, to question  our changing landscape and architecture, to view the world from imagination

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Website: robbemaes.com

Instagram: @road.to.now.here

 

The In-Between Landscape

The exhibition displays a combination of projects that explore the imagination through the manipulation of and play with photographic landscapes. By combining digital and traditional techniques new landscapes are produced to evoke the feeling of escapism while also highlighting the beauty of nature.

The project ‘The In-Between Landscapes’, created between 2018 and 2022, focuses on the visualisation of the Nothing and the In-Between, creating a new landscape that provides a calm yet mysterious center that the viewer can escape in. The project ‘Rhythms of Landscapes’, created in 2022 and 2023 explores the human relationship with landscapes and how we alter and shape them. Reflecting the landscape upon itself it reveals a new landscape, showing an altered layer of deep time revealing the gene that lies within the landscape. The combination of these two projects examine the possibilities of imagery and expand the imaginative world of photography where the real and unreal combine

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Website: leannewiggers.com

Instagram: @llwiggers

 

Kaleidoscope

This project represents transition and transformation. A constant flow of changes is inevitable. The boundaries between different dimensions are beginning to blur, turning the past and the future into a harmonious union. Reality is intertwined with the realm of imagination, where the line between what is real and what is unreal is dissipated. There is nothing right or wrong, there is only the magic of one moment where you look at what you see.

Through the prism of artistic expression, this project conveys the constantly evolving nature of life, combining the secrets of imagination and fragments of the memory of the universe, inspiring viewers to dare to dream and show their own unique realities.

Going on this journey, the viewer is invited to explore their own subconscious, becoming a co-author and hero of the project.

By reviving the paintings, creating a movement and continuation in them, reincarnated into the essence of their own fantasy and going inside the picture, the viewer becomes part of a surreal performance.

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Instagram: @innapachkina

Auseklis

Auseklis is the morning star and deity of the dawn in latvian mythology. Inspired by the snow and sunrises in Riga, the project titled Auseklis is a short story about imagination, seeing the stars, dreaming, and re-creating glimpses of myths and legends.

“If you find some rocks on Friday in the winter season, they are possibly covered with ancient texts of people who daydreamed… A rabbit lost in the big city carries the messages of meeting the trees of the forest.A bird flies over the dreams.The new world has created a new world. The golden city is given to the fake prophets. Auskelis has fled from the noise of the nightmares and is waiting, in the darkness, for a sign to make his appearance in the skyline…”

Residency Project at International Summer School of Photography , Riga Latvia

Digital Photography, 2022

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Website: danielorlandophotography.com

Instagram: @danielorlando980 

The Camera and It’s Imagination

The camera is revered as a neutral arbiter of truth. The camera never lies – and when it does it’s because someone made it lie. The camera has no imagination – it can’t make things up. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. What is projected onto the retina at any one time is an incomplete image which our brain processes into a coherent vision. The camera is not designed to be a teller of truth but to create images that please. 

It is at night that this breaks down. How we see at night is very different to how we see in daylight. At night a different human imaging system comes into play – one that is unknown to the camera. For the camera it’s always daytime. At night the camera’s superiority in sensing allows its daytime algorithms to render images that no human imagines. 

These images have all been taken in Ijmuiden at night. Ijmuiden is a bizarre combination of the industrial interacting with the natural, a fluid landscape. There is an underlying reality in each of the images – the car, the hunk of iron or the building in the image exists. The Camera’s Imagination manifests in how this reality is mediated. 

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Instagram: @andrew.wajs

Look as slowly as you can

Annemarie Hoogwoud sees that we live in such a hectic and fast-paced world that we hardly take the time to observe and absorb anything properly. We are already busy with the next thing without paying attention to our surroundings.

With her camera Annemarie takes the time to look differently, be able to see more and thus connect with the landscape. Thanks to this process she creates an abstraction from reality. Because only there you feel the simplicity, the layering and wonder that are the essence of her work.

That’s what this series of images is about: walking the path of slowness.

What happens when we take as much time as possible to observe what unfolds in front of us? By allowing slowness, we live fully in the present, which in essence is the only time we have. 

Slowness lets your mind wander, makes you curious and unveils what you didn’t see before. Slowing down gives space to our imagination.

After all, life is not what we live, it’s what we imagine we are living.
And for that, it helps to look as slowly as you can.

Find out more: 

Website: annemariehoogwoud.nl

Instagram: @annemariehoogwoud

 

Where I come from there is no grass

(Digital photography, archives, 2023)

Daria, 41, underwent surgery to implant a floppy disk in her brain, which, connected to nerves, analyses the mind to protect some data from being lost. Unfortunately, there were side effects probably caused by short-circuits in the disk, resulting in erroneous nerve impulses. Scientists have developed an experimental intravenous therapy that, combined with behavioural therapy, has a good chance of success, according to the study, but for now 

Daria has problems recognizing reality and herself from the past. Her memory is bubbling, there are logical errors, and the present is combined with fear coming from oblivion. Daria has a chance to recover within a few years, but unfortunately most doctors doubt a complete recovery, and psychologists say she will never again return to her pre-surgery mental capacity.

While working on the material I did not use the help of AI, but tried to step into the role of an error maker in reality. The story never happened, I created it inspired by working with Daria and talking about the impact of AI and future changes in reality. I tried to reflect her point of view and combine it with my reflections.

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Instagram: @mikolaj__tomczak