Innholdsfortegnelse for #1 2023 i Artdoc Photography Magazine

Note of the Editors We all know photographers do not replicate the world but reshape it with concepts, abstractions, and visions. – The Artdoc Team We all know photographers do not replicate the world but reshape it with concepts, abstractions, and visions. Conceptual photography deals with ideas and personal experiences made visible through diverse subjects, making it a rationally driven genre only in theory. Most artists are naturally driven to a non-realistic style to give space to their own visions and feelings. New York-based artist Daniel Gordon can be seen as a conceptual photographer, but he says his decision to make paper-cut still lifes was not a conscious one. He wanted to construct images in a way that transforms reality, creating work midway between photography, collage, and painting. Japanese photographer…

Underwater Surrealism is a photographic exploration that combines animals beneath the surface with scenes above the surface. Each image has a reference to the names of the animals, their purpose in their habitat, art historical references, or the animal being placed in ironic scenes. These photographs were taken while scuba diving around the world. All the images are photographed with my own camera. Humans like to see these animals at aquariums or while scuba diving. Instead, I am bringing these creatures up to us. I find the ocean creatures discarded, forgotten, or deemed as not important. This body of work is to bring these animals above the surface to make them important and to tell the story of their role in this world. Many of my dreams take place underwater.…

The twilight zone between reality and illusion is what I seek in my work. Shooting analogue and digital and using mixed media, I create a world where recognizability changes into what cannot be grasped. A universe that doesn't exist, but yet it does. Where the viewer becomes part of that world for a moment. The future is a memory (2021-2022) is a project about the paradox between the ephemeral nature of time, memory, and photography. In our brief existence, we attach ourselves to other beings, places, things, and memories, but these are swept up with time. All attachments will disappear. Do we lose ourselves in the subjectivity of the past and the future due to time's fluidity? Are memories but a glimpse in time? Why can we remember the past…

Nadezda Nikolova Mountains, hills, plains, and lakes—that is what we think we see in the abstract, dusky works of Nadezda Nikolova, but they don't exist in reality. The photograms are produced in the darkroom using the old and elaborate technique— wet collodion. The landscapes are transformed into elemental forms, giving room for a profound spiritual interpretation of the work. “My work is about hope. How can we transmute pollution and destruction? It's a spiritual way of looking at things to transform them into their original state.” The 19th-century collodion technique is mainly associated with a cumbersome 8x10inch view camera, but even though she possesses one, Nadezda Nikolova does not use it in her recent abstract works. Instead, with the collodion, she creates photograms in the darkroom by direct exposure to…

When you face death in your family, albums full of old photographs can tell us many stories. Unfortunately, many documents and old-time portraits were lost. Today, in the era of digital technologies, we have a chance to start creating our genealogy, research our identity and history and, as a result, save it digitally for the next generations. The project Primogenitors is my research of a family portrait, where I explore my roots, family members’ stories and their relations. In this project, I explore the Ukrainian nation I belong to and my identity. I started my project after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But my reflections about my family and its history started three months before the invasion, after my grandfather's death. I didn't see…

The essence of my artistic work is the question, “Who am I”. The most profound answer I find in nature where my feeling of being separated disappears in oneness. This profound research I transmit in my artistic photographs Soulscapes. Wondrous compositions of images present landscapes of mystical beauty and symbolism. While we have a view outside, it seems that we are travelling inside of us. Hidden doors are opening, and like a little child, we discover a magical universe in a wonderful flower or in a unique stone. Combining two photographs in one, we travel beyond our limited view of reality. In this vastness, we may feel a little glimpse of the greatness of our soul. www.andrea-christl-art.de…

I was inspired to photograph the Icelandic landscape 20 years ago after I moved to the United States and realised how closely my homeland was connected to my identity and sense of being. Landscapes are infused with personal history, and this work is created from the perspective of my temporal lobe epilepsy. The fragmented landscapes visualise a sense of distortion and loss, emphasising the imperfections of memory and the mind's inability to retain and fully comprehend its environment. I am hand-cutting and layering photographs in my most recent landscape work, creating unique sculptural pieces. Utilising human biological patterns, such as fingerprints, veins in the eyes or brain circuits, suggests our connection to, impact on, and interplay with nature. I also use patterns from geographic topography to visualise the reality that…

Photography not only shows the physical world around us but is also widely used to render abstract concepts and ideas about life. Artdoc presents the exhibition Conceptual Photography with many abstract, evocative, and metaphorical images. Visit the online exhibition…

Daniel Gordon How do you bring new perspectives and vigour to the classic genre of still life? New York Artist, Daniel Gordon, has the answer. His vividly coloured elaborate tableaux show well-known still life objects like sculls, vases, shells, flowers, plants, apples, pears, and, yes, blue bananas against backdrops with contrasting colours. His works are real because he creates and photographs the objects themselves. But they are also surreal because the objects are printed internet images—the apple, for instance, is a paper apple. Daniel Gordon was awarded the Paul Huff Award in 2014 by the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam. Maybe a coincidence, but still life was a 17th-century Dutch invention. Daniel Gordon has a very distinctive way of creating his works. First, he cuts out printed papers with images…

New Canvas Daniel Gordon Daniel Gordon cuts, builds, experiments and photographs. Gordon's relationship to photography is intrinsically linked to his working process. Like a painter or sculptor, he has an intense studio practice. He imagines and creates his images from scratch, literally and figuratively. New Canvas, arguably the most comprehensive monograph of the artist to date, focuses on both Gordon's final works and the process that leads to the end result, by emphasizing on the different layers that compose his photographs. Photography After Conceptual Art Diarmuid Costello Photography After Conceptual Art presents a series of original essays that address substantive theoretical, historical, and aesthetic issues raised by post 1960s photography as a mainstream artistic medium – particularly in light of the oft-heard critique of the arts’ ‘post-medium’ condition. Contributions trace…

Shinya Masuda Black overripe bananas, a dried-out pumpkin, and a cucumber with brown stains—all these fruits are surrounded by beautiful flowers before a fancy-coloured backdrop. What is the Japanese photographer, Shinya Masuda, telling us with his weird, enigmatic images? “All things must pass” is a phrase he learned from his grandmother as a child, triggering him to make images of rotten food. “I feel making these still lives is something I should pursue for the rest of my life. I am never tired of a realm that is simultaneously the visible material world and the invisible spiritual world.” The images of rotten food might seem somewhat cynical to the spectator, but they appear to have a deep emotional meaning. The title of his series Hanafuda Shouzoku combines two words: an…