Mercredi 06 Mai 2015 11:03:40 par Clarisse Treilles dans Expositions

Scott Dalton, " Where the River Bends "

Since 2010, artist Scott Dalton has been photographing along the US-Mexico border, returning multiple times each year to capture on film the fraught relationship between two major cities—Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and El Paso, Texas—that share history, traditions, and geography, but are physically and politically divided. Dalton’s resulting series, Where the River Bends, depicts daily life on both sides of the Rio Grande, emphasizing the cultural similarities and interdependence between these sister cities while simultaneously revealing the conflict and inequalities reinforced by such a border.

“With this project I am trying to engage with the border as a metaphorical launching point to address a variety of themes. Borders are divisive by intent, emphasizing differences between ethnicities, cultures, economies, and nations. The subject is rife with political and social implications for poverty, the drug-war and—perhaps most notably today— immigration. But beyond these ideas I am trying to address what the border represents to the people who actually live there. This is a multifaceted realm that tends to include contradictory perspectives. For example, the border can be a land of opportunity for poor Mexican workers looking for jobs in foreign-owned factories in Ciudad Juárez, or viewed as a lawless danger zone to be feared and fenced off by others. I am also interested in the idea of the proximity and possibility of the American Dream and what that means to people on both sides of the border.”

© Scott Dalton

Nadia Sablin, " From the Mountains and to the Sea "

Since 2003, artist Nadia Sablin has made many trips to the former Soviet Union to photograph what is now Ukraine. For Sablin, who was born in in the USSR, this ongoing journey has become a way of traveling back in time to experience the magic and beauty of her childhood. Although many of the sun-dappled rural scenes included in From the Mountains and to the Sea reflect this nostalgia for the past, there also looms in each image a darkness that provides viewers with a glimpse of the realities of everyday life there. This darkness, however, is tempered by Sablin’s engaging portraits of young Ukrainians, whose frank exuberance emanates from each frame to remind us of humanity’s strength and resilience—which Ukraine needs now more than ever.

“Photographing in the former Soviet Union is a mystical experience. It feels like I am returning to the place of childhood dreams and fairy tales. This time, I’m the one recording the stories. The disappearing world of the 20th century is still intact in much of the former Soviet Bloc and my journeys often feel like travel in time to a seemingly simpler world. . . There is a certain dark magic that rises from the very soil of this land. It is this magic that I hug with my camera, in the huts of the gypsies and the shepherds’ lean-tos and in the gestures of the people in the streets.”