Post Arcadia
©2011
The central theme of one of my long-term projects is the domestication of nature, which encompasses both exterior and inner space as an aesthetic concept.
Landscape is in its origin a concept, with roots in the beginning of industrialization and renaissance painting.
Seen as a concept, landscape therefore represents an image of an idea. We examine what an ideal landscape should look like and represent it as a photographic reproduction.
Consequently new images of nature are internalized. With this interior imagery we again create landscapes within which we physically and mentally exist.
Spaces of artificial environment, zones of attraction and splinter development are becoming increasingly familiar and merge constantly with the remaining rural and suburban landscape.
In Switzerland e.g. uncontrolled development has been recognized as an increasing problem regarding ecological, socio-cultural and political matters. Living in such a surrounding affects not only my daily life, but also influences my artistic work and my teaching photography.
In everyday life simulations of landscape and nature in relation of educative, scientific, recreationally oriented or economic contexts are ubiquitous. They not only influence our notion of nature but implicitly enhance a designed environment.
The differentiation between image, copy, representation, simulation and finally simulacrum is increasingly more difficult.
The images of the series “Post Arcadia” indicate, in content and form, a room representing the above mentioned phenomena.
These are both implicit in the context of landscape and photography.
