wall space gallery | the flat file

January 25, 2012

ND12 – Norihisa Hosaka

Burning Chrome. Norihisa Hosaka, part of Crossing Territories, created a world visually reminiscent of the film Blade Runner, with bright lights and a vision of a restless society in his native Japan. His technique, using HDR, highlights this super real, almost science fiction reality. Not just a study of place, these landscapes show the motion of people, of who has transited this place, seemingly immune to what is around them.

From Hosaka’s statement -

I am currently taking landscape photographs of Tokyo under my favorite theme, “Retrospective Luminescence.”

In the 80’s, key word in cultural movement was Cyberpunk; the 21st century near-future Tokyo viewed in movies, literature and music. The chaotic image of Cyberpunk Tokyo has become a fixture by the 90′s. [2]
Today, the image of near-future Japan created three decades ago, Cyberpunk Tokyo, seems somewhat a nostalgic reminiscence and has become one of the fictitious histories of Tokyo.

We realize that Tokyo has not become the cyberpunk city we often seen in the films. However, I feel a possibility of Tokyo and Japan becoming something we have envisioned in the 80′s. I want to take photographs of not now, not the past, and not the future but of a mixed timeline.

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shinjuku Yunika Vision

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shibuya Tsutaya

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shinjuku FUSA's

DECAY of LIGHTS: Ginza Ring Cube

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shinjuku Frente

January 24, 2012

ND12 – Greer Muldowney

We focus on size today, and the ability to fill a frame. Crossing Territories artist Greer Muldowney has managed to convey significant size in a small package. The boundaries in her images not only look at constricting space, its also about how we constrain people as well. The images in her series, 6,426 per km2, Greer looks at how we create density in a small space, in this case Hong Kong. Her work is vibrant, structural, and highly detailed. The best part is the images don’t take up an entire wall to make the point. At 20×24 inches, she has managed to give us the feeling we are standing on a curb looking into these structures.

from her artist statement -

At 6,426 people per km2, Hong Kong boasts the most densely populated urban center in the world. The reality of sustainable practices, depletion of resources and a shifting global power paradigm pervade media involving China, and its Western syndicate territory, Hong Kong. By making imagery here, I ask viewers to contemplate these issues, but to also see these places as homes; not statistics. As the living cities and infrastructure that address cultural standards and progressive technologies. These photographs do not propose a reality so different from the spin of contemporary media, but asks an audience on the other side of the world, the Western world, to reflect on whether these images provide a surrogate for wonderment or trepidation for a changing global climate and future.

Kwai HIng

Cheung Sha Wan #2

Cheung Sha Wan

Aberdeen

Lai Chi Kok

July 31, 2009

Emily Shur

Filed under: architecture, landscapes, portfolio reviews, Review Santa Fe — The Flat File @ 6:30 am


Emily has got to be one of the coolest people I have ever met. I had the pleasure of meeting her in Santa Fe this June at the Reviews.

A commercial photographer by day, her personal work lends itself to her downtime, when she doesn’t have to think on her feet. Reacting to her circumstance, giving us who she is, where she is, and that moment of peace, like an exhale, before gearing up to go out and do it again.
Her work is quiet and unassuming. The structure, color and sometimes the light of the images draws me in. I am not sure if it is the anticipation of whats next in the image, or it often feels like something just happened, and I am disappointed that I missed the event. She calls them small moments, but to me, who soaks up as much life as I can absorb, they all seem important. It seems like the yin and yang of the careless nature of what we do to our surroundings, and finding out it is all so deliberate.


ok, ok, enough. Take a look at the work.
Emily’s statement about the work -

Some of my earliest memories are of light shining through a row of hospital windows and walking down that long hallway with my father, going to visit my mother who was sick with cancer at the age of twenty-nine. I was three years old. I’ve always found it interesting that I don’t remember seeing her in the hospital. I only remember the light coming through the window and forming bright, glowing rectangles in repetition along the floor. Through the years, I’ve thought a lot about how memory subconsciously manifests itself; how small and seemingly insignificant moments become important and meaningful over time; how a lifetime is slowly constructed out of these moments. There’s no doubt this has impacted my photography.

This body of work represents roughly ten years of picture taking and an examination of my individual experiences. These images were made all over the world, under all sorts of circumstances. Sometimes I was led to a place for work, sometimes for fun, but in every situation I found myself celebrating the supposedly small moments. Photography has allowed me to give due importance to all of the bits and pieces in my life. These images are not idealized views of life experience. Instead, they are representative of a conscious choice I have made regarding how and what I choose as my memories. Births, deaths, milestones, and change are a part of every life. A face or a smile is not required for me to associate imagery with emotion. In my world, the subtle, the natural, and the insignificant are just as powerful as the obviously epic.

May 16, 2009

Willson Cummer

Filed under: architecture, Photolucida, portfolio reviews — The Flat File @ 5:52 pm

Wilson’s landscapes aren’t typical, they take the mundane and peripheral, and force you to look. Sometimes with solidarity, some with silence, and sometimes the paradox and incongruity just gets you.

There is something about his vision, and I am in the process of working it out. I think they are interesting.

He starts with a rooftop garage. How many times have you parked up there on the roof and wish you had the view to yourself? Didn’t Joni Mitchell say something about parking lots? Traditional landscape in concrete.
He then moves on to underpasses, and the newest portion of the portfolio is Lake Ontario. A great deal of the work has a sense of irony and silent expanse.

I really find it fascinating what traces we leave of ourselves. I keep thinking planet of the apes, with Lady Liberty coming up out of the sand….having a background in historical geology, studying the rock for clues to our past, I wonder what we will leave behind. In a way, I think Wilson does too. He just visualizes it.


May 12, 2009

Frank Relle

Filed under: architecture, Critical Mass, night photography, Photolucida, PhotoNOLA — The Flat File @ 7:34 am

Frank Relle’s work haunts me.
eerily beautiful. These images of New Orleans keep me on edge, and yet are somehow serene. I think it’s that push and pull that brings me in to them. I want to see what each image has captured in its frame. For me what shines through most in this work is Frank’s love of his city, and the honor he pays to its beauty.
The first exposure to it was last year’s Critical Mass, and then I was lucky enough to see it in person last December in New Orleans during PhotoNola, and went to my local Borders and picked up Color magazine, and was treated to the images again.

about Frank –

Frank Relle (b. 1976) is a photographer born and based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a 2007 International Photography Award and the Photo Lucida Critical Mass top 50 photographers.
His work is represented in major public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His photographs have been printed in the New Yorker, the Southern Review and the Oxford American magazines.

Relle continues to document the changing architecture of New Orleans and is working to share his images with an international audience hoping to inspire people around the world to help rebuild the city of New Orleans with the integrity she deserves.


April 9, 2009

S. Doyle Hammond

Filed under: architecture, New Directions, night photography — The Flat File @ 3:03 pm


I was introduced to Shauna Doyle Hammond last year when she was selected for our New Directions 08 show. I loved the strong structural lines, play with light, and great scale of her architectural work. I have since found a number of artists exploring this topic, and I think she was ahead of the curve and at the top of the class. Take a look.

about Shauna -
Shauna Doyle Hammond is a Seattle-born photographer currently based in New York. She earned her MFA in 2007 at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and has a BA in Art History from UCLA. Her most recent series, Nightfall, encompasses urban landscapes where commonplace subjects gain a heightened sense of mystery at night. Using only available light, trees are quietly illuminated in the darkness and the strange beauty of concrete is transformed into something otherworldly. Her upcoming work builds upon these themes, focusing on urban development and its impact on the neighborhoods of New York’s five boroughs.

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