© All images by Natascha Seideneck

Natascha Seideneck was born in Germany, grew up in England and lives in Denver, Colorado. Her work is interdisciplinary; often engaging in experimental processes that integrate still and time-based visual technologies. She is particularly interested in how landscape has been surveyed and surveilled, both in contemporary and historical contexts. Natascha has widely exhibited her artwork and produced numerous site – specific artworks, often collaborating with artists, designers and architects. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Metro State University of Denver and a member of Tank Studios.

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© All images by Anastasia Savinova

Anastasia Savinova born near the Ural Mountains in USSR in 1988, since 2013 she works and lives in Sweden. Her multi-disciplinary practice addresses places and ecologies, and revolves around spirit of the place and human relationship with more-than-human world. Her practice spans photography, large-scale photomontage, drawing, installation, object, video, sound, and performance. Having an architectural background, Savinova holds affection to constructing and building. A mountain walker, she is deeply moved and inspired by the wilderness. She works both with man-made and natural environment, and embraces phenomenological approach in exploring it. Her work has been shown and performed in group and solo exhibitions in Sweden and worldwide.

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Another Green World addresses a common sense of alienation from the natural world, exploring and challenging our assumptions that we know and have conquered the landscape. It is about discovering something unidentified and peculiar; revisiting the possibilities of early explorers and trying to experience the landscape with an open-mindedness wrought from the potential to find something new and unexpected, to recapture the excitement and awe of the pioneers, botanists, scientists and naturalists to whom all possibilities were open.

Using shapes inspired by insect eggs, shells, oceanic diatoms, sea anemones and corals, each ‘form’ is made from materials drawn from the surrounding area — like the cadis fly lava that builds an armoured case to protect and house itself — these forms are disguised or distinguished using seaweeds, river weed, moss, mares tail, bracken, heather, lichen, chalk dust and leaf litter.

© All images by Ellie Davies (2013)

Ellie Davies (Born 1976) lives in Dorset and works in the woods and forests of Southern England.  She gained her MA in Photography from London College of Communication in 2008.

Davies is represented by Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery in the UK, Patricia Armocida Gallery in Milan, Susan Spiritus Gallery in California, A.Galerie in Paris and Brussels and Brucie Collections in Kiev.

Davies recently launched her newest series ‘Fires, 2018’.  Fires 2 has been selected Winner of the Urbanautica Institute Awards 2018: Nature, Environment and Perspectives. The Fires series was also voted Winner of the 12^th Julia Margaret Cameron Award: Professional Landscapes and Seascapes category and the 12^th Pollux Awards: Professional Fine Art Series Winner.  There will be an Award Winner’s Exhibition for both competitions at Galerie Valid Foto in Barclona in early May 2019. The Fires series is featured in Dodho Magazine Issue 7 and Rakes Progress, Issue 10 (forthcoming).

I have been working in UK forests for the past nine years, making work which explores the complex interrelationship between the landscape and the individual. Our understanding of landscape can be seen as a construction in which layers of meaning that reflect our own cultural preoccupations and anxieties obscure the reality of the land, veiling it, and transforming the natural world into an idealisation.

UK forests have been shaped by human processes over thousands of years and include ancient woodlands, timber forestry, wildlife reserves and protected Areas of Outstanding Natural. As such, the forest represents the confluence of nature, culture, and human activity. Forests are potent symbols in folklore, fairy tale and myth, places of enchantment and magic as well as of danger and mystery. In more recent history they have come to be associated with psychological states relating to the unconscious.

Against this backdrop my work explores the ways in which identity is formed by the landscapes we live and grow up in. Making a variety of temporary and non-invasive interventions in the forest, my work places the viewer in the gap between reality and fantasy, creating spaces which encourage the viewer to re-evaluate the way in which their own relationship with the landscape is formed, the extent to which it is a product of cultural heritage or personal experience, and how this has been instrumental in their own identity.

Throughout my practice small acts of engagement respond to the landscape using a variety of strategies, such as making and building, creating pools of light, suspending smoke within the space, or using craft materials such as paint and pigment. The final images are the culmination of these interventions. The forest becomes a studio, forming a backdrop to contextualize the work, so that each piece draws on its location, a golden tree introduced into a thicket shimmers in the darkness, painted paths snake through the undergrowth, and strands of wool are woven between trees mirroring colours and formal elements within the space.

These altered landscapes operate on a number of levels. They are a reflection of my personal relationship with the forest, a meditation on universal themes relating to the psyche and call into question the concept of landscape as a social and cultural construct. Most importantly they draw the viewer into the forest space, asking the them to consider how their own identity is shaped by the landscapes they live in.

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The intention is to request a more personal response to the landscape, an experience embedded in memory, history, storytelling, folk law and magic, to engage the viewer in a dialogue with the image and in a sense of the familiar, drawing on an awareness of how our perceptions of the natural world are shaped. Ongoing debates surrounding landscape examine the consequences of conceiving of landscape as beautiful. These constructions obscure the reality of the land, veiling it, transforming the natural world into an idealization. The trees in the Smoke and Mirrors Heathland series allude to this construction, whilst also evoking a sense of the fairytale. These fantasy trees reference these fictions which persist in spite of any conscious knowledge about the material, social or political status of landscapes, to create ‘rural myth’ and romanticism, obscuring an understanding of the land as threatened and exploited, dangerous and unknown.

© All images by Ellie Davies (2013)

Ellie Davies (Born 1976) lives in Dorset and works in the woods and forests of Southern England.  She gained her MA in Photography from London College of Communication in 2008.

Davies is represented by Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery in the UK, Patricia Armocida Gallery in Milan, Susan Spiritus Gallery in California, A.Galerie in Paris and Brussels and Brucie Collections in Kiev.

Davies recently launched her newest series ‘Fires, 2018’.  Fires 2 has been selected Winner of the Urbanautica Institute Awards 2018: Nature, Environment and Perspectives. The Fires series was also voted Winner of the 12^th Julia Margaret Cameron Award: Professional Landscapes and Seascapes category and the 12^th Pollux Awards: Professional Fine Art Series Winner.   There will be an Award Winner’s Exhibition for both competitions at Galerie Valid Foto in Barclona in early May 2019.The Fires series is featured in Dodho Magazine Issue 7 and Rakes Progress, Issue 10 (forthcoming).

I have been working in UK forests for the past nine years, making work which explores the complex interrelationship between the landscape and the individual. Our understanding of landscape can be seen as a construction in which layers of meaning that reflect our own cultural preoccupations and anxieties obscure the reality of the land, veiling it, and transforming the natural world into an idealisation.

UK forests have been shaped by human processes over thousands of years and include ancient woodlands, timber forestry, wildlife reserves and protected Areas of Outstanding Natural. As such, the forest represents the confluence of nature, culture, and human activity. Forests are potent symbols in folklore, fairy tale and myth, places of enchantment and magic as well as of danger and mystery. In more recent history they have come to be associated with psychological states relating to the unconscious.

Against this backdrop my work explores the ways in which identity is formed by the landscapes we live and grow up in. Making a variety of temporary and non-invasive interventions in the forest, my work places the viewer in the gap between reality and fantasy, creating spaces which encourage the viewer to re-evaluate the way in which their own relationship with the landscape is formed, the extent to which it is a product of cultural heritage or personal experience, and how this has been instrumental in their own identity.

Throughout my practice small acts of engagement respond to the landscape using a variety of strategies, such as making and building, creating pools of light, suspending smoke within the space, or using craft materials such as paint and pigment. The final images are the culmination of these interventions. The forest becomes a studio, forming a backdrop to contextualize the work, so that each piece draws on its location, a golden tree introduced into a thicket shimmers in the darkness, painted paths snake through the undergrowth, and strands of wool are woven between trees mirroring colours and formal elements within the space.

These altered landscapes operate on a number of levels. They are a reflection of my personal relationship with the forest, a meditation on universal themes relating to the psyche and call into question the concept of landscape as a social and cultural construct. Most importantly they draw the viewer into the forest space, asking the them to consider how their own identity is shaped by the landscapes they live in.

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As everybody knows, the nature has gone into bad shape. 
It must be renovated!

Restoration by Ilkka Halso: My project approaches the restoration of nature in the means of technology and science. I show Ironic visions of mans relation to nature and his confidence in technology in solving problems caused by his own activities  

I have built fictive restoration sites. Scaffoldings are covering objects of nature instead of houses and man-made objects. Trees, boulders, rock faces and fields are under repair. 

Scaffoldings in the landscape: Modular “toybricks” come up from chaotic order of nature. A new geometrical space conquers landscape. I seek consciously monumental approach to my subjects. Scaffoldings and artificial lightning settings highlight and frame nature objects and detach them from context of everyday life. The object of nature and construction site that surrounds it form together a colossal installation. 

All images by Ilkka Halso.

Ilkka Halso, was born in 1965 in Orimattila, Finland. Graduated at University of Art and Design in Helsinki (UIAH) in 1992, he has been awarded with the Nuori Suomi, Finnish Art prize, 1994, and William Thuring prize, 2006. His work has been exhibited internationally in several museums, art galleries and art festivals.

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All images courtesy Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber, and Clamp Art Gallery, New York, NY.

Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber have been making art collaboratively for over nineteen years. Based in Brooklyn and Cincinnati, they construct meticulously detailed model environments and photograph the results. For the last decade they have found inspiration in their urban surroundings, imagining a future mysteriously devoid of mankind. Their miniature fake landscapes and interiors reflect a love of science fiction and dystopian entertainment (think Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run), an appreciation for great architecture, and an affinity with the Sublime painters of the Hudson River School. Because the work is of a model and not a real place, it creates a safe space to consider the larger ideas of disaster and our collective future. Devoid of people, these spaces become meditative, revealing not just mankind’s errors, but also our optimism, ambition and love of life.

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Ornitographies arises from the author’s concern for capturing those unnoticed moments and from the interest in questioning the limits of human perception.Xavi Bou focuses on birds, his great passion, in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes they generate when flying, making visible the invisible.

Unlike other motion analysis which preceded it, Ornitographies moves away from the scientific approach of chronophotography used by photographers like Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey. The approach used by Xavi Bou to portray the scene is not invasive; moreover, it rejects the distant study, resulting in organic form images that stimulate the imagination.Technology, science and creativity combine to create evocative images which show the sensuality and beauty of the bird’s movements and which are, at the same time, clues for those wishing to identify or recognize them.

In Ornitographies, the skill envied by men, the long lasting shared yearning of flying, is presented to us, extending our visual perception. Art and science walk hand in hand to create images, which are no longer a single portrait of reality but become a witness of the instants that, for a moment, were past, present and future all at once.

Ornitographies is a balance between art and science; a nature-based dissemination project and a visual poetry exercise but above all, an invitation to perceive the world with the same curious and innocent look of the child we once were. That child that still live in ourselves that want to trust that magic is something real.

All images by Xavi Bou

Xavi Bou got his degree in Geology at Barcelona University while he was studying photography at Grisart School. After his studies began working in the fashion photography world and advertising for several leading brands and magazines. He also taught digital postproduction at Grisart Photography School for four years.

In his work art and science walk hand in hand to create images, which are no longer a single portrait of reality but become a witness of the instants that, for a moment, were past, present and future all at once. 

Ornitography, his recent project arises from his great passion for nature and travelling, and his concern of capturing the beauty of nature, meanwhile exploring new methods to represent it. “My intention is to capture in a single time-lapse the forms that birds generate when flying, making visible the invisible, however, Ornithographies moves away from the purely scientific analysis of the movement that chronophotography provides, a genre that was carried out in the 19th century by photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne Jules Marey, is a balance between art and science, a project of naturalistic dissemination and at the same time an exercise in visual poetry.”

His work has been published by numerous magazines and newspapers including “National Geographic”, “The Guardian”, “Der Spiegel”, “Geo”, “Sonntag”… He showed his work in Holand, United States and Spain. 

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