Innholdsfortegnelse for #4 2024 i Artdoc Photography Magazine

“ As humans, we are humbled by nature’s innate power, starkly contrasting our vulnerability. - The Artdoc Team As humans, we are humbled by nature’s innate power, starkly contrasting our vulnerability. Photographers visualise this confronting contrast of nature’s strength and humanity’s fragility with enigmatic images, inviting the spectators to imagine their humble place in the world. The Expressive Nature issue of Artdoc Photography Magazine showcases images of nature’s beauty with underlying messages of humans’ inner struggles. Hidden inside their visual expressions of nature, artists ask the fundamental question of who we are as humans. London-based artist Nadia Attura looks for ways to enhance the real with painting and drawing. Her collages are surreal expressions of nature radiating the immersive experience of nature. Finnish artist Sandra Kantanen captures images of nature…

Portfolio Interview As an exchange student in China in 2001, Sandra Kantanen started her fascination with an expressive way of working with nature. Having studied photography in Finland, she was frustrated with the limited possibilities of the medium. By exploring a unique culture, she learned new ways of expression. “I had been studying painting as well. Photography, for me, was very much in the darkroom, which was too limiting. All the work inside the art photography looked too similar to me. I wanted another perspective. I think it was about being young and having already studied extensively.” The Chinese university had one of the first Epson pigment printers, which opened up a new digital workflow. “It was a great opportunity to experiment with different materials and touch the photograph’s surface.…

We invite photographers to participate in our open call for “The Unobserved,” an online photography exhibition that focuses on the mundane and everyday scenes that often pass unnoticed yet hold profound narratives about personal habits and communal routines. We seek images that unveil personal stories, often overlooked and quickly forgotten, capturing intimate daily moments or objects of symbolic meaning. Send your photographs that preserve and reflect on fleeting experiences and daily moments, inviting viewers to explore the deeper, sometimes hidden, narratives behind unobserved moments. This theme celebrates not only private physical spaces but also the personal stories and life experiences that define our everyday existence. “The Unobserved” is open to all photographers—amateurs and professionals alike—who are inspired to frame the unseen and uncelebrated aspects of the everyday to uncover the…

Featured In childhood, I used to ask myself, “Who am I?” Swiftly and in a prolonged way, without pauses, repeating this question in my thoughts, I realised my “Self” beyond the boundaries of body and mind, my authenticity as a part of the Universe. The feeling of awareness and immersion into the depths of myself was unforgettable, but unfortunately, it lasted just a moment. As an adult, I have lost this ability; however, the memories of that feeling have inspired me to create «The World of the Subconscious» series. It is about self-recognition through a symbolic image of the Tree as a symbol of life. In the project The World of the Subconscious, I explore the theme of self-knowledge through the allegorical image of a tree. The tree symbolises life,…

Featured My Work is part of visual research through materiality on the commodification of nature in the context of the Icelandic tourist industry. It was developed in Reykjavík with the SIM artist-in-residence program. Gentrification, waste, and environmental degradation are some tourism-related problems that challenge the idealised image of the Icelandic landscape. During my stay, I photographed highly visited natural locations, which I reinterpreted in combination with creating my own handmade recycled paper from waste. This exploration mirrors the transformative process of manifesting something from the void —a form of alchemy of waste— with the delicate equilibrium of our environment and the perpetual cycle it follows. About Francisco Gonzalez Camacho (b. 1990) is a Spanish visual artist, based in Helsinki. Gonzalez Camacho’s multidisciplinary approach ranges from photography, graphic printing methods, and…

Featured The Song of Trees is an ongoing project composed of different series in which trees are the main subject. City parks are the perfect ordinary setting for developing my contemplative practice, which has become my photographic practice over the years. Trees rediscovered as the great Nature’s connectors through a poetic glance and venturing myself into the practice of Ecological Aesthetics, defined by David George Haskell as “the ability to perceive beauty in the relationship sustained and embodied within a concrete part of the community of life. A step towards belonging in all its dimensions”. The Song of Trees speaks to us of a community of living beings, a network of relationships, and the experience of beauty as a forgetting of the self and a merging with the totality of…

Each of my photos, no matter who or what I’m shooting, is a way to convey my own view of a moment or situation and an opportunity to share that view with other people. As an observer, I am completely immersed in the subject, trying to establish a connection between the outside world and the inner emotions of other people. Creative projects become my voice, my way of sharing my vision of the world and raising important issues. I believe that through photography and art, we can see the world differently, generate discussion and contribute to change. Each project is an opportunity to express my beliefs, feelings and ideas. The topics I’m working on at the moment are the country’s historical heritage and the symbols of the era, using the…

Portfolio Interview The work of Nadia Attura balances between the real and surreal, both aspects being of vital importance. She explains how the real picture is the essential starting point of the work: “The real picture is me being in the landscape. It’s me walking through the landscape, discovering what’s around and looking at the detail as much as possible to capture it in the moment. My love of documentary photography and nature photography merges to express myself. I’m recording my impressions and remembering them while being present in that moment.” Photojournalism Attura started her career as a photojournalist, growing up in the documentary tradition. “I always gather information about the place I’m going to. I know what to expect, but those elements of wonderful surprise always exist. I need…

Under the Colored Sky is a photography series focusing on the dynamic between the sky and the desert terrain in the American Southwest. I created these images while on a road trip through Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, USA and Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, USA. Each time I visit the desert, I feel that this landscape is both familiar and foreign. These feelings were amplified when I travelled around Joshua Tree; the land in this national park is otherworldly. I had never seen rock structures or flora like this before, and I couldn’t help but wonder how this land was formed. The more I explored the park, the more I felt like walking on another planet. I wanted to embody my experience by creating photographs…

Featured Nature has always inspired artists. In recent years, my artistic work has focused on nature, sustainability, and transforming nature photographs into works of art. My series Wall of Nature (2019 - present) takes cues from the vertical gardens in Madrid, Spain. This epic garden, designed by French botanist Patrick Blanc in 2008, is one of the world’s lushest living walls to date. Over 250 species are represented on the living wall in a mass of over 15,000 plants for the miniature oasis. The vertical garden resembles a piece of environmental graffiti as much as a botanical piece. The pattern of colours is a fascinating combination of art, architecture and botany. In the Wall of Nature series, contrasting colours meld into one another, weaving and swirling from the top to…

The ‘Expressive Nature’ online group exhibition invites you on an immersive journey into the emotional and artistic resonances of the natural world, captured by talented photographers from all over the world. Through their lenses, the artists delve into nature, challenging traditional perceptions and photographic traditions by working with organic shapes, the interplay of light and shadows, distorted colours, immersive close-ups and innovative digital techniques. Each artist uses the camera not just as a tool but as a conduit to unveil the hidden dialogues of nature. The dreamlike photographs are echos of the inner confrontations with nature; they reflect a myriad of emotions and tell stories of peace and harmony, healing and redemption, as well as environmental issues. Nature appears as a source of strength, a sense of wonder, a reflection…

Amazed and influenced by the richness and diversity of nature, my work explores the relationship between human beings and their territory and questions our intimate connection to climate change. Rather than proclaiming an alarmist and disillusioned speech, I prefer to develop the emotional dimension by using beauty instead of ugliness. Eager to define my limits, I like to be thought-provoking by blurring the traditional boundaries of photography. In this way, I often shoot using reflections or blur, for example, or I give another dimension to my photo by creating double exposures or diptychs. Nature is my favourite playground because it offers many subtle variations, constantly changing with lights, shades, rain, fog, mist, clouds, seasons, etc. I called this series Rainbow because it is the perfect incarnation of all these variations.…