Photographer statement: "I was better with the sounds of the sea, then with the voices of men, and in desolate and desert places, I found myself again." Hugh MacDiarmid, from The Stony Limits and other poems Volume In 1933 the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid travelled from London to Shetland where he moved into to a small abandoned fisherman’s cottage on the island of Whalsay. He was on a journey of recovery, after several years of personal and professional disappointment. He spent 9 years living on Whalsay where, despite an unstable mental state and living in near poverty, he wrote more than half of his life’s work. Most of what he wrote during his Shetland years was driven by his experience of his surroundings, the North Sea, stony beaches, open skies and the isolation he felt on the small island. Whalsay became the centre of his imaginative universe and his writing reveals the introspection’s of a solitary man contemplating his place in the world. Inspired by MacDiarmid’s writing during his time in Shetland, I travelled to Whalsay where I stayed alone in a small isolated cabin. From there I visited MacDiarmid’s cottage, and then made a circular walk around the island making photographs in response to the isolation I felt amidst the vast Shetland landscapes.

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Photographer statement: The wintertag (winter day) series is one of the winter landscapes in Japan. This series is an ongoing project, starting in January 2014. These are photos at the foot of Mount Fuji and my hometown (central Kanagawa prefecture / An area along the Sagami River). The Lake Yamanaka at the foot of Mount Fuji is approximately 70km distance from my hometown. In my hometown, it snows rarely however, the Lake Yamanaka freezes every year. In November 2016, it snowed for the first time in 54 years in my hometown. The Lake Yamanaka is the headstream of the Sagami River and it is the only lake with natural debouch into the rivers among the Five Lakes of Mount Fuji. These landscapes are simplified by snow and I also tend to express simply and minimally.

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Photographer statement: Dust Never Sleeps presents a vision of Shanghai as a state of mind, both oneiric and limitless in its stillness. A place emptied of its habitual crowds, inhabited instead by composite geometry and neat lines outlining space and volume... always unexpected. The urban matter is looked at from afar, creating a detachment of vision and an enhanced loneliness. Urban expansion is focused on what is to become, on the transformation it’s suffering without any regard whatsoever to beauty. A diffused white invades every layer of the images, mixing the monochromatic sky with the plaster dust from the omnipresent construction sites. Demolition and reconstruction; man occasionally present, framed in this estranged dimension as an exception - sometimes slightly ironical - to the emptiness and rigorous architecture.

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Photographer statement: After moving to New York, Needham worked alongside fashion photographer Tom Munro as a digital tech. Often traveling on assignment, Needham found himself fascinated by America’s urban landscapes and began documenting the numerous-- and oft abandoned--parking lots along the East Coast. His acute focus on linear structures and barren terrain would eventually lead to the stark aesthetic that defines his current series.

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Photographer statement:

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Photographer statement: Since I first visited Tokyo I felt a strong connection with the place which, ironically, was so different from the ones I grew up and lived in all my life. When I got back home I was amazed by the vivid feelings that came back with me, feelings that I could only describe as some kind of “homesickness” though, obviously, I never really lived there. Since that first visit, it grew in me a strong urge to go back there as often as I could afford, trying to bring home as many memories as I could, in the only way I felt natural to do so, through my photography. “My Tokyo nights” is a series of impressions that I gathered during my solitary night walks through the streets of Tokyo.

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Photographer statement: Lost America examines a quiet stillness in a forgotten landscape that is, in a sense: ?on-pause?. Backwater towns and rural corners are juxtaposed with the ambiguity of detached suburbia. Places appear frozen in time, their inhabitants absent or long since departed. Ardently stagnant in their appearance, the images aim to unlock a moment of reflective contemplation and instil a melancholic feeling of familiarity. One might not notice or acknowledge these spaces, especially when viewed within the vast stretch of America?s panorama. Yet, when framed as a single vignette, the places can appear to echo a moment of mournful reverie. Or, for some, they might behold an alluringly sombre, everlasting impression.

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Photographer statement: All those photographs belong to Atlas des Régions Naturelles which is a large project that document the diversity of french landscape.

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Photographer statement: In 1963 President de Gaulle initiated a regional development plan known as ‘Mission Racine', to develop a wild and windy stretch of French coastline between Montpellier and Perpignan into a series of resorts. Avant-garde architects were hired to construct unique and unusual spaces which would be responsive to the local environment and focused on the individual. Although the project provided a new source of income locally, Mission Racine was not only about enriching the region. It included an 18% quota of social housing to allow more French citizens to take advantage of their time off work. It would become an alternative to the expensive Cote d’Azur without the high rise excesses of similar developments further south in Spain. Fifty High Seasons reflects on the cumulative effect of half a century of tourism on the innovative built environment established by Mission Racine, while showing why I fell for its unique charm. More informations about 50 High Seasons book

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Photographer statement: My work develops from an interest in a specific place or as in the case of my series ‘Brabant’ from an interest in the landscapes surrounding my hometown Tilburg. I have an emotional connection with these places because they constitute the landscape of my childhood. I spend a lot of time investigating narrow geographies within these landscapes; I tend to move around in certain areas over and over again with the changing light and through the different seasons. The Brabant series has originated from my profound feeling of loss. I mean the loss of familiar places, the loss of the original landscape and the visible history of it and of course the loss of biodiversity and free space. Since my childhood days I have seen Brabant changing continuously and often rapidly. These changes in the landscape are, of course, the result of our efforts to provide food, housing and other needs for a growing population. Eventually to create a better world for more and more people. I look at these changes with mixed feelings; these inevitable changes have an upside and downside. The downside has to do with loss. The images of the Brabant series show mainly rural places. It is precisely this rural aspect of the landscape that has got lost largely in the last fifty years. My sense of loss has been strengthened for sure by the fact that it concerns the context of my youth. So it is often somewhat painful for me to see all these changes, not only the negative aspects of the changes. I guess that is why I have a preference for fading light or for the last light of the day for the subjects of my images. In a broader perspective the traces of human activities in the countryside of Brabant, captured in my images, are in the end a kind of ‘pars pro toto’ for the enormous and irrevocable impact of mankind on this planet.

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