Abstract of the accomplished photographic work
We consider the Internet as something floating in the air, impalpable and ethereal. The series reveals a small piece of the massive infrastructure that stands behind it. Bursting in the half-light basement, the nerveless flash light makes the chaotic mass of wires come to the surface. A second set of images produced using Google Street View shows the facades of New York’s data centers. These blind sightless buildings host the terminal and junction points of these immense infrastructures that physically innervate the earth’s surface and that exist in a condition of non-visibility, hidden behind blind windows rather than buried or submerged at the bottom of the oceans. The visible emerges in the form of a constant flow of data, information, and images. We tend to imagine this restless flux as without a body, without weight, but the abstract always shows its roots in the tangible.
Description of the project you intend to pursue through the Prize
The Wall
“A nation without borders is not a nation.”
Donald Trump (2017)
Seventy-nine border walls exist globally, most erected over the last two decades; at least 15 others were in some planning stage as of this writing. The European community has 28% of the world’s walls, including the 20 already built from the Baltic Republics to the border between Greece and Turkey. The wall can be seen as a reflection of our human desire to control and separate. We build walls to protect ourselves and our possessions, to define our boundaries, and to keep others out. The Wall is a photographic project that aims to investigate and analyze these architectural objects and the physical and symbolic landscape that surrounds them. The project aims to depict the most significant of the 20 European walls. This could involve exploring their historical context, political implications, and how they have shaped and altered the surrounding landscapes.