Indholdsfortegnelse for #2 2020 i Artdoc Photography Magazine

"Does a photograph show reality? Or does it reveal the emotions the photographer intends to show?- The Artdoc Team Dear Reader, In this issue, we bring you a mix of nature photography and philosophical writing. Trees are silent protagonists in the work of Wendi Schneider. In an intuitive way, the American photographer creates visual poetry with images of branches and trees. In a similar but different way, Iranian photographer Ali Shokri depicts the serene beauty of trees as mirrors of humanity. And Christine Simpson surprises us with a composite of diverse natural elements above and under the water, showing the lush and vulnerable world of plants, birds and fishes. In our group exhibition Japanese Garden, we bring you a wide variety of photographers from all over the world around the…

In hectic times, nature always has a positive effect on the human mind. Nature brings reflection and tranquillity. After experiencing nature, we can look at life from a different perspective. In our Japanese Garden exhibition, art photographers show the natural world with their sense of serenity: Naohiro Ninomiya (Strasbourg, France), Amy Marie Gladding (Suffolk, England), Wendi Schneider (Denver, Colorado), Karla Guerrero (Mexico City, Mexico), Max C Doelling (Berlin, Germany), Nino Memanishvili (Georgia), Axel Calatayud (Mexico), Julia Hiebaum (La Jolla, California), Annette Wijdeveld (Hattem, The Netherlands), Erin Nowak (Moorestown, New Jersey), Gabriel Dia (Paris, France), Noemi Heidel (Berlin, Germany), Ricardo General N. (City of La Serena, Chile), Matt Roberts (Montclair, New Jersey), Aristo Vopĕnka (Brussels, Belgium), Jennifer Graham (South Africa), Emma TS Robinson (London, United Kingdom), Justin Quinnell (Bristol, United Kingdom),…

The photographs of Naohiro Ninomiya, now living in France, are personal memories of his hometown in Japan. The images show intimate details of nature, like a bark of a tree, flowers in a glass, a solitary tree in the field, a ripple in the water surface with reflections of clouds and trees. They all tell little stories; not of prose, but more like poetic whisperings of koans. “Even when you might think so, there is no conscious metaphor in the picture. The characteristic Glanage (meaning ‘collection’) is the absence of concept. Neither is there a message in the images. I just show the trivial beauty of things which constitute my life. I think life itself is the most important thing for us human beings. All I can do is taking…

The series States of Grace of Wendi Schneider, an American photographer residing in Denver, evolved organically. “I photograph what I’m drawn to and strive to immortalize the grace I find there, to make the intangible tangible, and to instill my images with the spirituality felt at the moment of capture. These moments are my states of grace.” The series is extensive and is informed by nearly 40 years of photographic imagemaking. Her work originates from her youth, growing up in a family of artists in the lush, plush South. Schneider: “As a child who grew up in the shadows of the Holocaust, the murders of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and countless others in our systemic racism and antisemitism, I embraced the ideology of different strokes for different folks.” Moon…

Looking at the photograph by Minor White, Portland, Oregon, 1964, I observed that harmonious lines, luminous leaves that seem to reflect light, surfaces with deep blacks and lines crossing each other. The proportions of the image and the subtle details strengthen the calm that radiates from the photograph. The fact that the photograph is made in subdued light, and that the photographer has consciously made use of it, gives me as a viewer a certain form of deep emotion. There isn’t much to see in the photograph. There is no event that I can analyze, no story, no anecdote. There is only the photographer’s attention to a small piece of almost insignificant reality, sharply etched leaves, worn-out wooden fence, and rich contrasts. But because the photograph is abstract and at…

“With my photography, I explore philosophical themes that contribute to my process of individual and spiritual growth in life. Themes like stillness, acceptance or gratitude can always be found in my work. With the practice of photography I enter into a meditative state. Leaving behind all the ideas of how the world should look like, I create subjective photographs, capturing beauty and wonders of the moment. I utilise atmospheric conditions, multiple exposures, digital manipulation, diverse materials and different techniques to emphasise tactility in my prints. I create images in which time and space are irrelevant. There is only one moment, and that is the moment of ‘being’. There have been several moments in my life when the universe has surprised and touched me with the extraordinary beauty of its magical…

"With no formal training in photography, but a lifelong love of the visual arts, the camera has become a means of artistic expression for me, particularly in recent years. It has provided me with a much needed creative outlet in the midst of daily life and a way to reconnect with the natural world. Through recent experimentation and selfteaching, I have introduced digital processes into my work. Utilising various editing apps, images are layered with tones and textures, blurring the lines between photography and painting, and between reality and fantasy, to give them an evocative and otherworldly feel. With a love of vintage biological prints and Japanese Sumi-e art, elements of both of these art forms strongly influence my work. These images were taken during the months of Autumn, most…

“To me, each tree, like a human being, has a tale to tell. When a tree dies, a whole story is interrupted, and destiny is altered for the worse. I feel as if the trees, bundled at the back of trucks, are cursing us with their broken hands, wounded faces, and severed roots. Perhaps this is how we are led towards damnation, Little by little stripped of our humanity when man’s abounding foliage moistened with the dew’ is reduced to ash and smoke. Nature is a mirror to show us how humankind interacts with the world. Why can’t we be kind to nature and the trees, the lungs of the earth? As an artist, I believe that art can remind us of this. And as an artist, I feel the…

Roland Barthes | Camera Lucida A graceful, contemplative volume, Camera Lucida was first published in 1979. Commenting on artists such as Avedon, Clifford, Mapplethorpe, and Nadar, Roland Barthes presents photography as being outside the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind, and rendering death and loss more acutely than any other medium. This groundbreaking approach established Camera Lucida as one of the most important books of theory on the subject, along with Susan Sontag’s On Photography. This personal, wide-ranging, and contemplative volume--and the last book Barthes published--finds the author applying his influential perceptiveness and associative insight to the subject of photography. To this end, several black-and-white photos (by the likes of Avedon, Clifford, Hine, Mapplethorpe, Nadar, Van Der Zee, and so forth)…

After he stopped as an economist, Sebastião Salgado began a career as a social documentary photographer. He made haunting images of starving people in the Sahel, photographed miners in Brazil, did the project Workers on human labor, and made the project Migrations on global migration. In the end, photographing human misery became too heavy for him, especially after the civil wars in Rwanda and Congo for his project, Exodus. Genesis became a mega project for eight years. With his singing voice of a Brazilian, he speaks emotionally about his project. “We, my wife Lélia and I, came up with the entire story of Genesis and worked it out. We got the idea to travel down the planet earth to see which parts of the world were still pure and untouched.…