No 28
october 2013
Landscape photography inspires
an adventure. One packs a bag,
gets the film out of the fridge,
makes a thermos of tea and
drives someplace. Sometimes
the destination is just up the
road and other times it is
through the deep snow - always
looking for something a little
out of the ordinary. A sparkle
here, an inspirational moment
there, and years of returning
throughout the seasons to
capture and frame a particular
place. As we drive, our eyes
alight on something that makes
us stop, consider, re-frame,
focus, and capture a fragile
moment. We follow an impulse,
prefer one exposure to another,
chase our ideas and finally gain
a deeper understanding of our
last image.
You stand back and observe
the landscape from a
distance. There is a moment
of suspension, when you have
to go out on a limb. You hear a
twig snap, the birds overhead.
You focus, find your balance,
compose yourself, look for that
hundredth of a second - caress
it, press the shutter and put your
name to it.
We orient ourselves, move
forward, frame again and expect
nothing. It is an instinct we
follow.
Being out and about instills a
sense of travel and carefreeness.
It lightens the heart and quickens
our steps. We are spontaneous,
we walk, we trespass and look for
a quiet, personal landscape. Yet
we are always in search of that
transformation which takes place
before our eyes, hour by hour,
and if we listen carefully - the
dialogue within ourselves also
changes. We challenge our ideas,
we think and reason and finally
we find the image we are looking 04 Paul Gaffney
for. We accept the landscape,
choose how we view it - from a
We Make the Path by Walking
distance or close up, including
or excluding certain parts. We 34 Walker Pickering
make those images that hold our
memories, which we will have Nearly West
forgotten in the not too distant
future. A tentative grasping of the
real - a moment captured. 64 Katrin Koenning
This issue presents the work Lake Mountain
of six amazing & talented
photographers.
They walk us through studies of
98 Mark Dorf
the landscape: the devastating Axiom & Simulation
effects of mass tourism, the
arbitrary and often disconnected
relationship between the real 122 Piergiorgio Casotti
and its representation, and Sometimes I cannot smile
a re-imagining of childhood.
Each artist offers us a deeper
understanding of our complex 154 Luisa Zanzani
surroundings and the perfect
loveliness of photography. Adria
 Paul Gaffney

We
Make
the
Path by
Walking
paulgaffneyphotography.com
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During 2012 I walked over 11
3,500 kilometres with the aim
of creating a body of work
which would explore the idea
of long-distance walking as a
form of meditation and personal
transformation. My intention
was to create a series of quiet,
meditative images, which
would evoke the experience
of being immersed in nature
and capture the essence of
the journey. The images seek
to engage the viewer in this
walk, and to communicate a
sense of the subtle internal
and psychological changes
which one may undergo while
negotiating the landscape.
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13
14 Paul Gaffney is a Dublin-based
artist who has recently completed
an MFA in Photography at the
University of Ulster in Belfast.
Gaffney was selected for the 2013
PhotoIreland Festival’s New Irish
Works, a series of solo and group
exhibitions which showcased
twenty five contemporary Irish
and Irish-based photographers,
and was also chosen by Brian
Griffin for an Artist of the Day
solo show at Flowers Gallery
in London. His work has been
included in various groups
shows throughout Ireland, the UK,
South Africa and Italy.
His self-published book, We
Make the Path by Walking,
has been nominated for the
Photobook Award 2013 at the
6th International Photobook
Festival in Kassel, Germany,
and was shortlisted for the
European Publishers Award
for Photography.
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Walker Pickering

Nearly
West
walkerpickering.com
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As a child, I was fortunate to 39
spend time with my father
while he lived in Port Harcourt,
Nigeria. This instilled in me a
great sense of adventure, where
travel has been formative to
my work, and caused me to
seek out the exotic among the
ordinary. My long-term project,
Nearly West, is a journey through
the land of my childhood, re-
imagining places my ancestors
lived and experienced.
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48 Walker Pickering (b. 1980) was
raised in the oil fields of West
Texas and the swamps of far
East Texas, with summers spent
at family reunions in the Deep
South. Walker’s work has been
exhibited throughout the United
States, and is included in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
and The Wittliff Collection
of Southwestern & Mexican
Photography’s permanent
collections. He gives lectures on
his work regularly, and teaches
photography in Texas.
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 Katrin Koenning

LAKE
MOUNTAIN
katrinkoenning.com / edmundpearce.com.au
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74 During the 2009 Black Saturday
Bushfires considerable damage
was caused at Lake Mountain, a
popular winter destination 120
km out of Melbourne, Australia,
changing the site forever. Lake
Mountain is a work in progress
that studies our relationship to
this scarred and transitioning
Australian landscape.
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84 Katrin Koenning is a German
photographer based in
Melbourne, Australia. She
regularly exhibits in Australia
and internationally, and her
work has been shown at
festivals such as the New York
Photo Festival, Delhi Photo Fest,
Noorderlicht and FORMAT. Her
images have been published
widely and she has won
numerous accolades including
the 2012 JGS Award (Forward
Thinking Museum). Katrin holds
a degree in photography from
the Queensland College of Art,
Griffith University, and is a
former Editor of the Australian
PhotoJournalist Magazine. She is
represented by Edmund Pearce
Gallery, Melbourne.
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 Mark Dorf

Axiom &
Simulation
mdorf.com
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Axiom & Simulation
examines the ways in which
humans quantify our natural
surroundings through the
use of scientific and digital
means. As a developed global
culture, we are constantly
transforming elements of
our physical environment
into abstracted non-physical
calculations in order to gain a
greater understanding of our
complex surroundings. These
transformations often take
form through mathematical
or scientific interpretations
and as a result, the referent
becomes a clouded and distant
entity. When the calculated
representation is compared to
its real counterpart, an arbitrary
and disconnected relationship
is created in which there is very
little or no physical or visual
connection at all thus resulting
in questions of definition – data
vs. object and macroscopic vs.
microscopic.
When observing a three 105
dimensional rendering of a
mountainside, it holds the
familiar form to what we
experience in nature, but has no
physical connection to reality
whatsoever – it is merely a
file on a computer that has no
mass and only holds likeness
to a memory. Moving in even
further, when translating the
file into the most basic of
computer programing codes,
binary code, we see just 1’s
and 0’s – a series of numbers
creating representation from
a language composed of only
two elements that have no
grounding in the natural world.
These transformations generate,
literally, a new reality – one
without its original referent, a
copy with no definitive source.
These planes of existence
however, do run parallel to our
own physical existence. These
digital worlds are becoming
ever present in our lives as
technology continues to
progress through math, science,
personal computers, and the
Internet. This transformation,
manipulation, and breakdown
of information is exactly
what dilutes our primary
understanding of the world we
inhabit and inevitably leads
us to create these new planes
of existence and a digitally
quantified perception.
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112 The young artist, Mark Dorf,
grew up in Louisville, KY in a
family based in science and arts.
For the past few years he has
spent his time seeking out new
landscapes and environments to
immerse himself within in order
to continue his explorations of
humanity and their interactions
with the natural landscape from
where we all once originally
came. Mark seeks to understand
humanity as an observer
in his surroundings, using
photography as a tool to explore
the curious habitation of the
world around us.
Mark currently resides in
Brooklyn, New York where
he creates his images
and continues to explore
contemporary art.
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120
PIERGIORGIO CASOTTI

SOMETIMES
I CANNOT
SMILE
piercasotti.com
arcticspleen.com
I often find myself thinking
about life and death.
I decompose the pieces,
dismantle elements in an
attempt to rationally analyze
them and then recompose and
reconstruct the fragments,
only to end up with a different
equation each time.
For reflection one looks for the
right place. I look for life and
death. And greenland is the right
place for me.
Greenland is far. Greenland is
seductive, enthralling.
Greenland is as unsettling as it
is ambiguous. It makes you feel
free and claustrophobic.
It is nature having a merciless
grip on life. Nature takes over, it
takes possession of rationality
and gives a meaning to daily life.
It smells of freedom but it forces
you there helpless, day after
day, month after month.
Greenland is alluring and 125
unsparing. It manipulates and
molds you. Greenland has strong
and menacing colors with many
gray shades in its soul.
Greenland narrates a deafening
silence. It’s a voice whispering
undefinable and inscrutable
emotions.
Greenland has the highest suicide
rate among young people. Almost
twenty percent of them attempt
to end their lives every year. Two
percent succeed.
It’s a far journey to greenland.
Up there our conception of life
and death shakes, priorities are
inverted, elements shuffled. A
fatalist, dichotomous approach
to life. Black or white, without
shades in between, raw and cruel.
It’s about surviving, often
psychological.
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146 Born in reggio emilia in 1972 he
graduated in economy / statistic
from university of parma.
After taking photography classes
at pratt institute of new york
city in 2005 he started up as a
fashion photographer, always
longing for his real passion for
documentary photography. It
was back then that he decided
to wander the world with a new
perspective and since then he
have been exploring people and
places. Piergiorgio has always
been attracted by dynamics
of societies around the world
trying to explore them in the
first person, intimately. It’s the
different faces of human beings
that he’s interested in.
Since 2010 he committed
to video documentary as
a complementary way to
tell stories. He discovered
photography as a mean to both
explore the world and himself
at the same time. It’s been an
indissoluble link since. What
he photographs has always
something to do with himself.
In his work he tries to balance
between documenting and
personal emotions.
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 ADRIA
Luisa Zanzani

www.luisazanzani.com
The series ADRIA focuses on 157
cultural and environmental
transformations that changed the
north Italian Adriatic coast due to
the proliferation of mass tourism.
Once feared as dangerous malaria
regions, the coasts of Italy were
»discovered« by tourism only at
the end of the nineteenth century.
Within a hundred years the Adriatic
coast was first acclaimed as
fashionable bathing resort and
later blamed for embodying the
devastating effects of mass tourism.
This photographic series,
developed over a period of two
years (2009-2010), investigates
cultural and historical stereotypes
which affect our perception of a
worldwide famous but still partly
unknown region.
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172 Luisa Zanzani studied design in
Florence (Italy) and Saarbrücken
(Germany). After spending a
few years working as motion
designer and art director, she
graduated in photography at the
University of Applied Sciences
Bielefeld (Germany) with a
project on her homeland region,
the italian Adriatic coast.
Her work focuses on the relation
between men and landscape
and the iconic symbolism of
tourist places.
She lives and works in Cologne.
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Front image Walker Pickering Back IMAGE Katrin Koenning
Please note no image in UYW can be reproduced without the artists prior permission.
All images are protected by copyright and belong to the artist.

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