Noorderlicht

Sense of Space

8th Noorderlicht Photofestival

main exhibition / 1 aug 1 sep 2001

Didier Massard ©

AES Group

• THE WITNESSES OF THE FUTURE: ISLAMIC PROJECT

  At the beginning of a new millennium, some see the foreshadowing of a global society in which everyone will benefit equally from economic and technological progress. Others, on the contrary, foresee a confrontation between various world communities. This vision of the future predicts a disastrous collision between the three greatest religious cultures: Christianity, Islam and Confucianism. The AES Group - Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovitch and Evgeny Svyatsky - want to demonstrate the absurdity of this "theory of colliding civilisations." With the help of digitally manipulated images, they show us the face of cities such as New York, Paris and Sydney in 2006, under Islamic domination. These are ironic, fictional images about the political and social dimensions of urban space.

  

• THE WITNESSES OF THE FUTURE: ISLAMIC PROJECT

  

• THE WITNESSES OF THE FUTURE: ISLAMIC PROJECT

  

• THE WITNESSES OF THE FUTURE: ISLAMIC PROJECT

  

• THE WITNESSES OF THE FUTURE: ISLAMIC PROJECT

  

Aziz + Cucher

• INTERIORS

  Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher are among the pioneers in digitally manipulated photography. In their confrontational images they are continually sounding out the boundaries between reality and fiction, a quest in which the achievements of biotechnology play an important role. The series FAITH, HONOR AND BEAUTY (1992) consisted of a series of idealised nudes. In DYSTOPIA (1994), by rubbing out and closing up mouths, noses and eyes, they changed portraits of models into repulsive monstrosities. With INTERIORS Aziz+Cucher go still a step further and with the help of the computer create imaginary spaces from photographs of human skin. Although the images suggest three-dimensional qualities, at the same time they have a corporal character. The result is as monumental as it is emotionally perplexing.

  

• INTERIORS

  

• INTERIORS

  

• INTERIORS

  

Sergio Belinchón

• CIUDADES EFÍMERAS

  As a result of increasing free time, many Southern European regions are undergoing a remarkable urban transformation. For instance, along the Spanish coast so many blocks of cheap apartments are being stamped out of the ground that it has by now become one of the most thickly populated areas in Europe. Belinchón's interest in these ephemeral cities is less for these "architectural ghosts" themselves, than for the people who live in them. According to him, their lifestyle tells us much about the norms, values and identities of the modern Westerners.

  

• CIUDADES EFÍMERAS

  

• CIUDADES EFÍMERAS

  

• CIUDADES EFÍMERAS

  

• CIUDADES EFÍMERAS

  

Nico Bick

• NO TITLE

  The principle subject of Nico Bick's photographs is Amsterdam. There he records the view that people have when they look out their window, and that in part determines their experience of the urban environment. Commissioned by the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Bick made a large photographic canvass for the Dutch submission to the Venice Architecture Biënnale 2000. The canvass consists of a collection of images of people on the street; it is not so much the experience of what they see that is central, as the look of the people themselves, as they unsuspectingly move through public space.

  

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Theo Bos

• EVERYTHING'S GOING WELL, HERE

  What strikes Theo Bos about the urban milieu is the manner in which people must constantly be adapting to the continual stream of changes. Today the city is often defined as a "mental space," as first and foremost a image that we carry around in our heads. But at the same time that city is, of course, also a reality. It is a place in which we move around physically and literally take our place. On the street that produces brief, unexpected moments, which in photographs take on an almost theatrical character.

  

• EVERYTHING'S GOING WELL, HERE

  

• EVERYTHING'S GOING WELL, HERE

  

• EVERYTHING'S GOING WELL, HERE

  

• EVERYTHING'S GOING WELL, HERE

  

Balthasar Burkhard

• NO TITLE

  Since 1997 Balthasar Burkhard has been making aerial photographs. He photographs megacities such as Tokyo, Mexico City and Chicago - the proverbial "molochs" of modern civilisation. In addition he makes photographs of deserts: regions which, on the contrary, are not shaped by human activity. In this manner Burkhard sets cultural and natural structures over against each other, without seeking polarisation. Through their heavy, deep tones his photographs take on a comparable, massive stature. Yet in these almost sculptural bird's-eye views, details continue to command attention, right to the horizon.

  

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Thibaut Cuisset

• NO TITLE

  Since 1985 Thibaut Cuisset has travelled the whole world seeking out extraordinary landscapes. He is constantly searching for regions that he does not yet know. Whatever environment he is photographing, light and colour are the most important elements in his work. Cuisset asks himself which is more important for him: photographing landscapes or the trips as a whole. In any case, time and again he encounters breathtaking panoramas, and very diverse natural landscapes pass in review in his magnificent panoramic photographs.

  

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Antoine d'Agata

• LA FRONTERA

  Antoine d'Agata showed the series MALA NOCHE in Wonderland, the main exhibition of Noorderlicht '99. In its raw, confrontational black and white images, he revealed life on the fringes in the slums of Mexican cities. His new series LA FRONTERA can be seen as a follow-up to this project. D'Agata travelled to the Mexican-American border, where he, this time in colour, recorded daily life. His (sometimes literally) moving photos afford a journey through the violent, often dark urban landscape.

  

• LA FRONTERA

  

• LA FRONTERA

  

• LA FRONTERA

  

• LA FRONTERA

  

Denis Darzacq

• ENSEMBLES

  In ENSEMBLES Denis Darzacq follows the movements of people in the city. He observes how they meet each other, and in this way investigates the social codes and the stereotypes about life on squares and in streets. Darzacq considers public space as a theatre, and its inhabitants as actors. He photographs the mise-en-scène like a voyeur - from a distance, and from above. In these surprising compositions, the play of approach and avoidance seems almost a dance.

  

• ENSEMBLES

  

• ENSEMBLES

  

• ENSEMBLES

  

• ENSEMBLES

  

Yannick Demmerle

• NO TITLE

  Over the past decade Yannick Demmerle has visited Northern Germany several months of each year. There he wandered around for hours in the woods and vast marshes. While he lost himself totally in this environment, he was impressed by the spectacle of an untouched, natural setting in which time, past, present and future, no longer matter. Demmerle has no eye for lavish nature and grand vistas. Although his photographs are certainly not romantic landscapes, these images exude a feeling of melancholy.

  

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Adrienne van Eekelen

• KOP VAN ZUID

  This is the fourth time that Adrienne van Eekelen is taking part in the main exhibition at Noorderlicht. After her portraits of Russian women (1995), pregnant women (1997), and her picture report on a stay in a Japanese artists village (1999), she is now present with work about her own environment, the new Kop van Zuid neighbourhood in Rotterdam, a project she began in 1993. That is the year Van Eekelen settled in the former harbour area, and saw the old Kop van Zuid disappearing before her eyes and the new one arise. In nighttime shots she recorded how the area underwent a magical change.

  

• KOP VAN ZUID

  

• KOP VAN ZUID

  

• KOP VAN ZUID

  

• KOP VAN ZUID

  

Mitch Epstein

• THE CITY

  Mitch Epstein has showed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among other places. In 1977 his book "Vietnam: A Book of Changes" was named as one of the ten most beautiful American publications of the year. With THE CITY Epstein returns to his own home town, New York. The series is a combination of documentary work, visual diary fragments, and absurd situations. With the city as background for many stories, Epstein brings private and public life face to face and gives shape to both the intimate core and the anonymous skin of the Big Apple.

  

• THE CITY

  

• THE CITY

  

• THE CITY

  

• THE CITY

  

Folke Hanfeld

• NO TITLE

  With the invention of stereo photography, midway through the 19th century, people thought they had developed the ultimate technique for making true-to-life, realistic images. The eye could read and sense the space in the three-dimensional image, and the experience was more "real." Folke Hanfeld plays with one of the fundamental elements of stereo photography, the distance between the two camera lenses. If this distance is increased, the picture appears smaller and the viewer feels larger. With this intervention, Hanfeld's urban views change into a scale-model world. In the disorienting, three-dimensional bird's-eye shots, imposing cities like Berlin and Osaka appear to come right up close, and give the viewer the almost physical experience of being a voyeur.

  

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• NO TITLE

  

Matthias Hoch

• CHARGED PLACES

  Matthias Hoch photographs objects that are of vital importance for daily life in modern society, such as government offices, hospitals and banks. With great interest in contemporary architecture, Hoch records the places where there is nothing to see or experience: the backs of the buildings, empty spaces and parking garages. These are the final pieces of the newly delivered complexes, which were the last things to be filled in on the drawing board, interchangeable lumps of architecture from which the identity of the building cannot be read. They are symbolic of the social machinery that, according to Hoch, functions like a refrigerator with a multicable.

  

• CHARGED PLACES

  

• CHARGED PLACES

  

• CHARGED PLACES

  

• CHARGED PLACES

  

Anja de Jong

• BORDERLAND

  Anja de Jong has been working on her project BORDERLAND since as far back as 1992. She travels the world to make visual documents of locations that are "no-man's-land," transitional places between nature and culture. These are generally inhospitable spots with extreme climatological conditions, where people can stay at the most temporarily as a tourist or scientist. Nevertheless, a constant struggle between man and nature is taking place on these edges of civilisation. De Jong is exhibiting series on Antarctica and on the tropical rain forests of Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. The first region is characterised by research stations and claims by various countries, The rain forests, although formally protected, are falling prey to rising eco-tourism.

  

• BORDERLAND

  

• BORDERLAND

  

• BORDERLAND

  

• BORDERLAND

  

Chrystèle Lerisse

• INTÉRIEUR(S)

  In her INTÉRIEUR(S) Chrystèle Lerisse goes in search of details: a joint, a crack, a floor or a wall. In these serene images of domestic rooms, she discovers the traces of wear and records both the absence and the presence of the occupants. The panorama proportions of her close-ups create the suggestion of three-dimensionality. At the same time, the minimal size emphasizes the quiet and poetic character of her vision.

  

• INTÉRIEUR(S)

  

• INTÉRIEUR(S)

  

• INTÉRIEUR(S)

  

• INTÉRIEUR(S)

  

Martin Luijendijk

• LANDSCAPES AND OBJECTS

  Landscapes and objects - large scale and small. The depth of focus in a photograph often determines into which category we will place a subject. We have become used to this interpretation through photographs and film and television images. With their out of focus foregrounds and backgrounds these landscape shots seem to be photographs of maquettes; objects, on the contrary, are photographed sharp from front to back. The model and reality switch places, and everything the viewer has to go on visually is lost in Luijendijk's images.

  

• LANDSCAPES AND OBJECTS

  

• LANDSCAPES AND OBJECTS

  

• LANDSCAPES AND OBJECTS

  

• LANDSCAPES AND OBJECTS

  

Dolorès Marat

• SHORES

  Dolorès Marat photographs people who are trying to find their way through the city. They walk restlessly through streets and departure halls at airports, or take the escalator at an underground station. They are constantly en route. From where and to where? In Marat's sultry photos the roving urbanite hurries along like a shadow past a colourful background, or allows himself to be caught in sharp focus while he waits for an elevator.

  

• SHORES

  

• SHORES

  

• SHORES

  

• SHORES

  

Didier Massard

• IMAGINARY JOURNEYS

  Didier Massard is a commercial photographer and photo editor. In addition he does autonomous work, consisting of what is called "table top" photography. Like a theatre director, he constructs models of highly imaginative scenes, which he then lights and photographs. IMAGINARY JOURNEYS is a series of fairy tale landscapes. With cunning lighting and an eye for detail, Massard creates deceptive illusions with an aura that recalls Magical Realism in painting.

  

• IMAGINARY JOURNEYS

  

• IMAGINARY JOURNEYS

  

• IMAGINARY JOURNEYS

  

• IMAGINARY JOURNEYS

  

Guido Mocafico

• NO TITLE

  Guido Mocafico has worked the last ten years as an advertising photographer for such famous fashion lines as Gucci, Christian Dior, Hugo Boss and Armani. Dissatisfied with constantly being cooped up in photo studios, Mocafico decided to travel the world in search of an "architectural utopia" and buildings scarred by the violence of war. He found these in Brasilia and Beirut, respectively, examples of creation and destruction, and photographed them as if they were still lifes. Drawing on his huge practical knowledge of light and its use, he showers the buildings with the colour of imposing, deep blue nights, fixing all attention in beauty and decay.

  

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Walter Niedermayr

• MOMENTARY RESORTS

  Whether it is the Swiss Alps or the Japanese mountains, the mountain landscapes photographed by Walter Niedermayr invariably look imposing and impressive. Humans appear only as tourists, and always as nonentities. The colourful ski suits and Japanese winter uniforms are at the most insignificant, graphic specks on the white mountain tops. "Momentary Resorts" is a work in progress, on which Niedermayr has been working some years now. In it he not only shows the immense beauty of the mountain landscape, but also the defacement, pollution and erosion that result from human presence. His panoramas, assembled from multiple photographs, show small displacements and changes in perspective, which symbolise the scars on this vulnerable landscape.

  

• MOMENTARY RESORTS

  

Jonathan Olley

• CASTLES

  Journalists, photographers and camera crews have followed the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland closely for years now, but attention has rarely been given to the consequences the conflict had for the urban environment. Olley photographed the heavily armed observation posts and forts erected by the British, which define the street scene in Northern Ireland. They loom up over shops, pubs and fish and chips shops like modern castles. Now that the British army is slowly but surely withdrawing as a part of the peace process which has since gotten under way, the buildings and towers are being demolished brick by brick. This makes Olley's photographs a form of visual historiography.

  

• CASTLES

  

• CASTLES

  

• CASTLES

  

• CASTLES

  

Edith Roux

• EUROLAND

  For several years now Edith Roux has been photographing the increasing uniformity of the periphery of large cities in the European Union. Everywhere the same business estates, similar office complexes and uniform shopping malls are rising, invariably bordered by the same undeveloped terrain. In order to emphasize the uniformity of her subjects, Roux always selects the same camera angle and with the aid of a computer she colours all the skies in her photographs an identical blue. Although these business estates are reachable only by auto, she keeps the access roads deliberately out of the picture. The results are almost abstract images, in which the modern developed environment is stripped of any individuality.

  

• EUROLAND

  

• EUROLAND

  

• EUROLAND

  

• EUROLAND

  

Jean Ruiter

• NEW AMERICAN LANDSCAPES

  In the series NEW AMERICAN LANDSCAPES Ruiter photographs constructions he makes himself from plastic knickknacks bought in American $0.99 Shops, against the background of desert landscapes around Nevada. The effect is disconcerting: it is as if the vegetation in this spot, as colourful as it is monstrous, had grown there naturally. The plastic utensils, termed "archaeological finds of the future" by Ruiter, are mass-produced, examples of the unrestrained prosperity that makes living more comfortable and at the same time threatens life itself because of the environmental pollution that goes with it. The sharp contrast between these objects and the background in the photographs speaks of the conflict between culture and nature.

  

• NEW AMERICAN LANDSCAPES

  

• NEW AMERICAN LANDSCAPES

  

Hans-Christian Schink

• NO TITLE

  With his work Schink focuses particularly on the appearance of the no-man's-land in urban environments. For instance, making use of monumental formats he photographed the construction of viaducts in the former East Germany. In the work represented here he recorded walls, spatial elements which under normal circumstances escape our attention. Built to separate or close off, they are photographed by Schink to fill the whole image, through which they lose their depth and dimensions, as well as every reference to their function.

  

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Ken Schles

• REPOSITORIES

  After Schles had finished off his now famous photo book "Invisible City" (1990), he settled in the East Village, in New York City. It is a neighbourhood of heroine dealers, artists plodding away toward a breakthrough that never comes, squatters, immigrants and other lost souls. Over the course of time he saw familiar residents disappear as a consequence of AIDS, drugs or careers. In their place came yuppie residents - with money. In REPOSITORIES Schles recalls memories of the East Village before the metamorphosis. He can not make time stand still, or prevent the departure of friends, but in the photographs he can give shape to his feeling of that era. It is a series on the meaning of a personal environment and the value that the smallest objects can possess.

  

• REPOSITORIES

  

• REPOSITORIES

  

• REPOSITORIES

  

• REPOSITORIES

  

Derek Shapton

• PARKADES

  One cannot imagine the "American way of life" without the automobile. On his trips around North America Derek Shapton saw how much the design of the landscape is now attuned to the motor car. Since then his work has primarily dealt with what he calls the "dehumanizing aspects of the automobile." But his photographs of parking garages also show the contrary beauty of these spaces designed for automobiles. In Las Vegas, the artificial city in the desert that exists only thanks to the auto, the upper storeys of the garages merge perfectly with their surroundings: very hot, open spaces where no person is to be seen. They are asphalt deserts, and at the same time oases of calm in an effervescent gambling city.

  

• PARKADES

  

• PARKADES

  

• PARKADES

  

• PARKADES

  

Kristin Sjaarda

• HOLLAND SERIES

  Although born in Canada, Sjaarda has Frisian grandparents. During her first visit to Friesland she was overcome by a feeling of recognition: the horizontal, flat land with here and there a vertical element like a tower or tree; that was also the landscape of her own youth. She asked herself if her grandparents and other Dutch immigrants had had a similar experience of the landscape on their arrival in Canada. In a series of Frisian and Canadian landscapes Sjaarda gives shape to feelings of recognition and nostalgia. Her pake and beppe (grandfather and grandmother) form the bridge between the two geographic and emotional worlds.

  

• HOLLAND SERIES

  

• HOLLAND SERIES

  

• HOLLAND SERIES

  

• HOLLAND SERIES

  

Jem Southam

• THE SHAPE OF TIME

  Jem Southam, earlier this year nominated for the British Citybank Photoprize, showed for the first time in The Netherlands during Noorderlicht '91. Two years later he was part of the main exhibition "Home". Southam generally photographs during his walking tours in the vicinity of his home town of Exeter. He combines the results into poetic series around the theme of man and nature. In THE SHAPE OF TIME he focuses on the changes to which nature exposes itself. Pools fill up and dry out. Estuaries are the scene of battles between the water streaming down rivers and the tides. Rocky coasts erode under the influence of wind and weather and the ebb and flow of tides. The changes take place within several hours or over many years. Man can only look on.

  

• THE SHAPE OF TIME

  

• THE SHAPE OF TIME

  

• THE SHAPE OF TIME

  

• THE SHAPE OF TIME

  

Simon Standing

• EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION

  In EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION Simon Standing visits modern residential neighbourhoods. They will have looked idyllic on the drawing boards of the architects, but once in the hands of their new residents the neighbourhoods show their true faces. The residents screen themselves from one another with iron curtains of fences and garden sheds. Nature comes from the garden supply store and is reduced to lawns that are enclosed by one's own fence and that of the neighbours. The mini-estates contrast sharply with the rural landscapes which they commonly adjoin, and where before the "modernisation" people still had all sorts of space.

  

• EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION

  

• EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION

  

• EMBLEMS OF CIVILIZATION

  

Lars Tunbjörk

• OFFICES

  Lars Tunbjörk pictures people in the place where they spend much of their day: at work. In office buildings he photographs the personnel in the rigidly designed work environment. In these sterile work spaces, however, each person still expresses their individuality. They add something personal to the bleak furnishings, as a result of which each photo will tell its own, inscrutable story. In each photograph a balance between humour and sadness becomes apparent, a human factor that is at odds with the strict organisation of the work.

  

• OFFICES

  

• OFFICES

  

• OFFICES

  

• OFFICES

  

Terri Weifenbach

• FROM THE BOOKS 'HUNTER GREEN' AND 'IN YOUR DREAMS'

  Terri Weifenbach is a nature photographer who rows against the current. Not interested in distant foreign lands or exotic plant species, she photographs the parks and gardens in the suburbs of her own home town, Washington. In this formalised nature she zooms in on a flower, a leaf or a blade of grass. Because of the minimal depth of field in her photos, often only a small detail of the artificial nature is divulged. But the colourful, out of focus background forces itself on the viewer and becomes as important as the twig in the foreground. At the same time, there is something ominous about the vaguely rendered surroundings.

  

• FROM THE BOOKS 'HUNTER GREEN' AND 'IN YOUR DREAMS'

  

• FROM THE BOOKS 'HUNTER GREEN' AND 'IN YOUR DREAMS'

  

• FROM THE BOOKS 'HUNTER GREEN' AND 'IN YOUR DREAMS'

  

• FROM THE BOOKS 'HUNTER GREEN' AND 'IN YOUR DREAMS'

  

Jacquie Maria Wessels

• LIVING

  Everyday life is central to the photomontages of Jacquie Maria Wessels. Each time she concentrates on one theme, seeks the differences and extremes, and then sets them down uniformly next to one another. Previously she utilised this approach for series on eating in public spaces, and gardens and their owners. The series "Wonen" shows a number of diverse ways of living. Wessels has made portraits of the residents of a houseboat, and the users of a beach house. Around them she has mounted photographs of their home and its immediate surroundings. In this way she creates a spatial perception of various ways of living.

  

• LIVING

  

• LIVING

  

David Williams

• STILLNESS AND OCCURRENCE

  David Williams initially devoted himself to documentary photography, but slowly his photography has become increasingly abstract. The series STILLNESS AND OCCURRENCE comprises dreamy seascapes. Making use of a view camera and long exposure times in combination with soft and vague time exposures, he creates images in which the sea and sky merge into one another imperceptibly, and time and space seem imprisoned. The inspiration for the series arises from Williams's interest in Eastern philosophy. "The sea has long been a spiritual symbol in photography. Within this tradition I have added the human presence, caught up in the ebb and flow."

  

• STILLNESS AND OCCURRENCE

  

• STILLNESS AND OCCURRENCE

  

• STILLNESS AND OCCURRENCE

  

• STILLNESS AND OCCURRENCE