The journey
taken across the landscape is what allows us to have a connection to place,
people and narrative separate from the routine of our day-to-day existence.
Remembrance of travel and the interaction with the natural is romanticised and
selective. River is a collection of images that explore the links we make
to the landscape kept deliberately wild and accessible to only the few. The
original images have been re-interpreted to create distance from direct memory.
The images
for River
were made over a number of years at Poronui, a lodge outside Taupo, New
Zealand. Transport to and around the lodge was by plane or helicopter and you
feel the isolation and emptiness and also a sense of the unique. Engagement
with the river, whether walking, flying, rafting, fishing or riding explores
the nostalgia of the wild and is an experience quite different from the urban
one.
The images
are all film-based, scanned and manipulated to create a body of work that
interprets our deep memories and the way the brain is selective in editing our
recollection. The images reference photographers such as Francis Frith and the
19th century age of the travel photographer, traditional printmaking and the
Genesis series of images by Sebastiao Salgado. This series is on a far more
intimate scale, both in the geography but also the image size. There is a
deliberate use of dense, deep blacks, diffusion and grain. While photographers
such as Frith set out to document the human element and the built environment
this series is reverential for the natural.
"Therefore, our world-view – how we understand our landscape and our
part in it, impacted by our personal experience – has a profound influence on
how and what we remember and take from our landscape and how we glean meaning
from newly encountered places."
Geraldine Mate