Water is the theme running through Albumen Gallery’s Unseen exhibition concept - water in various states and different environments.
We’re bringing three photographers from different parts of the world together, who each in their own way explore the power of water shaping the environment.
The works of the three photographers share an interest in exploring abstract textures in landscape and nature photography. However the aesthetic quality of the images is coupled with a bittersweet element reminding us of the fragile – endangered - equilibrium of the world’s biosphere.
Polish photographer Ania Freindorf’s ongoing project ‘Naked Glaciers’ will eventually cover seven continents. Throughout the project Ania Freindorf aims to convey a sense of power of glacier formations coupled with today’s fragility and exposure of these ice structures to climate change.
Australian photographer William Stewart’s Greenland work also reflects on the climate related threat to the environment. But his photos of Greenland icebergs also contain a historical dimension.
A highlight of any boat trip along the coast of Greenland is to witness one of nature’s more dramatic phenomena, calving. In a thunderous display large chunks of ice, with the dimensions of a tall building, break off the end of a glacier into the sea. An iceberg is born. The cycle is complete. The new iceberg drifting in arctic water represents the end of a journey that started hundreds of kilometers inland when the sheer weight and pressure of the central ice sheet caused the formation of a frozen river reaching out from the centre to the coast; a journey that might have started almost 1,000 years ago.
To the modern traveller witnessing this scenario provides a curious connection with the past. The formation of the ice – now breaking off into the sea as new iceberg – would have occurred not long after the Norse led by Eirik first sailed west from Iceland discovering and settling in Greenland.
British Photographer Robert John Watson’s seascapes are beautiful minimalist compositions. Verging on the abstract, they are studies of the sea at different times of the day and in varying light conditions. The viewers are invited to immerse themselves in them. There is something calming in losing yourself in their endlessness – calming and alarming. The omnipresence of water in Robert John Watson’s images also suggests a world drowned by climate induced rising ocean levels.
Edmund Sumner's Cavea Arcari photos magically capture the unique character and atmosphere of the underground water flowing through of these caves. Located in the hills close to the city of Vicenza, the Cavea Arcari was the quarry that provided the precious Pietra Bianca di Vicenza that was used to build, among other buildings, the famous villas of Andrea Palladio. The contour of the exploitation came from cross-tunnels generated as the stone material was extracted, in such a way that huge blocks of rock were left in between, giving structural stability to the cave. After several centuries of extraction, this process formed a space of intricate geometry and great sculptural power, and when the quarry ceased operations, it was sporadically used by Laboratorio Morselleto as a venue for certain events having to do with the family enterprise. In 2010, David Chipperfield Architects was commissioned to fit out the space for cultural and artistic purposes, while respecting the qualities of the very unique enclave.