Amsterdam-based photographer Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk has created a series titled The Andromeda Strain that focuses more on the notion of discovery than the place itself. The images conjure up thoughts of a space or time perhaps untouched or undiscovered by humans. I personally found some of the imagery, shapes, patterns and colors to be incredibly intriguing and thought provoking. Words from the artist about this series, via featureshoot:
After making many landscape photographs I realized the search for special places is more important than the place itself. The notion of discovery has been always intimately linked to photography. The cliche of the photographer as an explorer of unknown and rough places became a starting point to construct images. I played with the “National Geographic:-language essentially without leaving my hometown. I searched for locations that, after small interventions, can fit in an imaginary travelogue. Using low-budget special effects and lighting I staged natural phenomena and imagery. To this work made on location I added still-lives constructed in the studio. Referring to nature and scientific photography, the tabletop landscapes create confusion on the overall status of the series. I often choose material that has a perishable or unpredictable quality, like foam or spaghetti. No Photoshop is used to achieve the effects. The artificial and the real, and the different sources the image is based on, should be present simultaneously.
There’s no doubt, water should not look like that. In the Chaohu Lake in Heifei, China, it does. At least for now. But with the country putting the cleanup of it’s waterways on in it’s sights, having invested over $7 billion towards the treatment of eight rivers and lakes in 2009, hopefully things like this algae filled lake will soon be an image of the past.
Despite the unnatural state of this water, there is an amazing amount of beauty in the image. The fisherman can be seen instead as a painter, his oar the brush and the water the canvas that supplies it’s own paint. He stirs the water, skimming across the canvas in his boat and with simple strokes applies the color. He paints his movements through this somewhat surreal landscape.
“Because Mars is so much colder, however, the seasonal ice that gets deposited at high latitudes in the winter and is removed in the spring (generally analogous to winter-time snow on Earth) is actually carbon dioxide ice. Around the south pole there are areas of this carbon dioxide ice that do not disappear every spring, but rather survive winter after winter. This persistent carbon dioxide ice is called the south polar residual cap, and is what we are looking at in this HiRISE image.”
USGS Dune Database Entry
Exposure of Polar Layered Deposits (PLD) with Unconformities
“The PLD holds clues to past climate regimes similar to ice cores on Earth. Several of the layers occur in fairly regular sequences, as seen in this image, suggesting that Mars underwent cyclic climate changes in the past.”
USGS Dune Database Entry
Monitoring of South Polar Residual Ice Cap Erosion
Edge Along Gale Crater Interior Mound
Bouncing Boulders
“Most debris on crater walls slides straight downhill. In this HiRISE image we see examples of boulders that have bounced downhill, not necessarily vertically. A prominent example looks like a dotted line from the top of the crater wall where the boulder took off to the crater floor where it finally came to rest. Numerous boulders have slid partway down toward the crater floor, which is covered by sand dunes. This is actually a small crater (approximately 1 kilometer wide) within an unnamed but much larger approximately 30 kilometer crater.”
With footage from the late 1940’s, this documentary titled “In The Street” by James Agee, Janice Loeb and Helen Levitt captures the poetry in the streets of urban New York. The text at the beginning reads, “The streets of the poor quarters of great cities are, above all, a theater and a battleground. There, unaware and unnoticed, every human being is a poet, a masker, a warrior, a dancer: and in his innocent artistry he projects, against the turmoil of the street, an image of human existence. The attempt in this short film is to capture this image.”
It has been divided into two parts, both of which are below…
Helen Levitt, a New York photographer known for her amazing work in documenting the urban experience within the streets of New York City, passed away this year at the age of 95. She truly had a way of seeing and through those eyes she saw a vibrant place, bursting with life. She had a way of capturing the culture through film. Her photos will live on and continue to inspire.
Environmental Graffiti had a great post awhile back on America’s Rivers From Above that I really enjoyed. Rivers are nature’s artist…carving away stone, creating sensual curves and creating amazing scultpural landscapes. Just like the structure of a tree, I have a great fascination with rivers and often love to study them and draw them, practicing various curving forms and branch-like patterns. Once I found myself scribbling such curves on a restaurant napkin with a children’s crayon left behind from someone previously at the table. These photos are beautiful.
Pollen is a seriously frustrating and downright offensive little thing to so many people, especially in the springtime when those who are unfortunately allergic just want to be outside without an accompanying box of tissues. This is where I thank my lucky stars that I grew up on a farm surrounded by such allergens as animals and hay. But allergies aside, the tiny grains reveal an interesting little world when viewed under a microscope. They come alive with intricate patterns, textures and strange forms.
These images follow my thinking in that everything that be beautiful if you look at it right. Sydney-based photographer, Mark Mawson, captures these amazing images from simply dropping paint into water. More images from the Aqueous series can be viewed here.
