A Scape

The photographic series A Scape is devoted to the theme of landscape and its relationship to the city. The definition and explorations of boundaries and edge conditions both physical and conceptual occupy this photographic series. In the historical context both terms ‘city’ and ‘landscape’ are presented as dichotomies, clearly marked by the city wall as a man-made boundary to distinguish between cultured space and wilderness.

A Scape questions the perceived opposition between these two terms, and sets out a quest for a new space in-between land and city, transforming both city and nature into a strange space of indeterminate expanse and texture.

Focused on the peripheral spaces of London, the images follow what formerly was perceive as the boundary land of the city but the photographs do not define this peripheral borderland as a ‘green belt’ but rather as ‘displaced areas’ – non-places presented in a state of ambiguity. The viewer perceives mountain or desert-like landscapes, but these places are man-made, abandoned and left to their own devises. The series presents heaps of leftover road surfacing materials at the borders of the city, denying scale and location while offering strong allusions to the tradition of Romantic landscape painting.