Constructed Landscapes

Award winning visual artist Dafna Talmor will be presenting her new project, 'Constructed Landscapes' at the Photographer's Gallery Folio Forum this Thursday at 7pm.

"Constructed Landscapes transforms colour negatives of landscapes initially taken as mere keepsakes through the act of slicing and splicing.  The resulting photographs allude to an imaginary place, idealised spaces or as Foucault states, “a virtual space that opens up behind the surface”. 

The work stems from a frustration with photographing landscape, something I refer to as photographic agoraphobia.  For years, my work consisted of photographs taken in interior spaces, with suggestions of outside space, as seen through the ongoing body of work entitled Obstructed Views.  As soon as I stepped outside with my camera, I felt overwhelmed with the possibilities and became aware of the lack of limitations (provided so neatly by an interior space).

My practice is based on an obsessive preoccupation with home. As a result of this obsession and despite my ambivalence, whenever I travelled, I found myself taking pictures of landscapes.  These photographs were taken out of a purely personal need and desire to ‘take’ a piece of that land or place with me.  As the photographs were initially taken with no conceptual agenda, I felt the very loaded history of the photographic genre of landscape impeded me from finding a use or purpose for the resulting images.  I therefore found myself with rolls of film I was utterly disappointed with; the negatives sat and accumulated for years in boxes, neglected of any artistic function.

I have always found limitations inspiring and so what was initially a cause of frustration and disappointment, led to the idea of merging different places of personal meaning to create idealised and utopian landscapes, of giving meaning and function to these seemingly defunct negatives. As a result, photographs taken over several years in my country of birth (Israel), where I was raised (Venezuela), across the UK (where I currently live) and the US (where my sister resides) have formed the basis of this ongoing project." – Dafna Talmor

Date: Thu, 31st May
Venue: The Photographers' Gallery, Folio Forum, 16 – 18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW
Free entry

More about Dafna Talmor.

More about the Folio Forum