earth (2010)
Analog C-type prints on Fujiflex Crystal Archive
40 x 40 cm
40 x 40 cm
The photographs from earth were taken from a moving car on a series of roads that crisscross an especially mountainous region of northeastern Sicily, the mountains known as the Madonie and Nebrodi.
The aim was to always have a still point in a primarily moving and blurred image. The combination of stillness and movement was used by the artist to represent the complexity and contrasts every-present in life, the eternal and the constantly changing, the permanent and the temporary. They are physically just like the brief moment one glimpses a view from a car, the scene remains in memory but the experience is ephemeral.
The phenomena of combined movement and stillness is a constant in nature, it is akin to the spinning of the earth. Though we don’t witness this as a direct experience - our world appears still to us - the earth is in fact constantly spinning on its axis, day and night, a reality, which allows us to exist and prosper.
The photographs were taken in an area marked by centuries of human and mythic habitation. The oldest known story about these Sicilian mountains is that they were formed by giants. These giants were discovered by the Greeks when they conquered the island. The Greeks are said to have imprisoned the giants underground and the mountains were made by the giants punching skyward to escape. The photographs were taken using a 50-year Hasselblad with a polaroid back employed for testing and analogue film for the final prints.
The aim was to always have a still point in a primarily moving and blurred image. The combination of stillness and movement was used by the artist to represent the complexity and contrasts every-present in life, the eternal and the constantly changing, the permanent and the temporary. They are physically just like the brief moment one glimpses a view from a car, the scene remains in memory but the experience is ephemeral.
The phenomena of combined movement and stillness is a constant in nature, it is akin to the spinning of the earth. Though we don’t witness this as a direct experience - our world appears still to us - the earth is in fact constantly spinning on its axis, day and night, a reality, which allows us to exist and prosper.
The photographs were taken in an area marked by centuries of human and mythic habitation. The oldest known story about these Sicilian mountains is that they were formed by giants. These giants were discovered by the Greeks when they conquered the island. The Greeks are said to have imprisoned the giants underground and the mountains were made by the giants punching skyward to escape. The photographs were taken using a 50-year Hasselblad with a polaroid back employed for testing and analogue film for the final prints.
| Photo Review Australia Issue 45 - The photography of Jane Burton Taylor |