TERRITORIES

The American photographer Aaron Siskind took close-ups of painted walls, asphalt surfaces, rocks and lava fields, creating abstract black and white images that represented a bold rejection of the camera's usual depth of perspective.

 

Many friends shared his loyalty to the flat plane, including the abstract expressionist painters of his time. His friend Carl Chiarenza extended this approach by making "landscapes of the mind" out of the close-ups of the film disc wrappers. Both photographers created images that possess both the traditional clarity of classical photography and a graphic and metaphorical emotional power.

 

The pictures under the title TERRITORIES take up this motif, but leave the photographed objects largely unrecognisable, without recourse to the original material. The new landscapes arise solely from the subconscious. Reality remains behind the emotional resonance.