Constructed Landscapes

Constructed Landscapes

An investigation into representations of landscape, Constructed Landscapes is a project I’ve been developing for over ten years; Consisting of three sub-series, the work stemmed from my personal archive of photographs initially shot as mere keepsakes across different locations that include Venezuela, Israel, the US and UK. Produced by collaging medium format colour negatives, the process relies on experimentation in the colour darkroom.

Transformed through the act of slicing and splicing, the resulting images are staged landscapes, a conflation combining the ‘real’ and the imaginary. Through this work, specific places initially loaded with personal meaning and political connotations, are reconfigured into a space of greater universality. Blurring place, memory and time-defying specificity and referring to the transient – the work alludes to idealised and utopian spaces.

In Constructed Landscapes, condensing multiple time frames by collaging negatives to construct an image transfers the notion of the ‘decisive moment’ from the photographic act to the act of assembling and printing in the darkroom. In turn, fragments of varying source images collide and collude to create an illusory landscape; gaps and voids where negatives fail to meet or overlap mimic (and form new) elements of landscape, disrupting composition and distorting perspective.

In dialogue with the history of photography, Constructed Landscapes references Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with the materiality of film. Whilst distinctly holding historical references, the work engages with contemporary discourse on manipulation and the analogue/digital divide. Beyond photographs, the work has expanded to include site-specific vinyl wallpapers, spatial interventions, photograms, studies and publications.

Constructed Landscapes (vol. III) by Dafna Talmor  (UK)

April 13 – May 21, 2022
opened by Emese Mucsi, curator at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center

TOBE Gallery | Budapest, Hungary

Press

• A táj mögötti táj, Cséka György | Új Művészet