Digital print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag®
120 × 96 cm
Edition 3
The Post Topographic
Living in a time where we consume more images than ever before our perception of reality is increasingly altered by images. As images become more manipulated it becomes harder to distinguish what can be seen as real, enabling constructed representations to replace our own experiences and influence our expectations of place. False promises distort our view on the subject making us long for an image that does not corresponds with the physical place.
The perfected representations of distant lands make us yawn for the pristine and unspoiled lands but is the view that is offered to us a truthful reflection or a false promise? Fascinated by this question the project investigates my personal longing formed by imagery I acknowledge as a falsified version of reality to see if the process of constructing the image can replace the experience of the real thing.
In “Post Topographics” I create photographic images using digital laser scans of the earth appropriated from U.S Geological Survey data. In an attempt to translate objective information I use ‘terrain models’ originally created to measure climate and land change. The program strips away any details and traces of both vegetation and man-made structures. What is left is a detached computer-generated image that documents the land without regard for subjective or aesthetic choices, yet the image that is produced still manages to remind us of classical photographic representation. By presenting the computer-generated images in a traditional photographic manner the work questions the reliability of the format and the way it alters our perception of place.