Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Essai Pour Une Archéologie Imaginaire.






Essai Pour Une Archéologie Imaginaire. Photographs by Gilbert Fastenaekens. ARP Editions, 2008. 66 pp., 20 two color illustrations., 11x11¾".

Belgian photographer Gilbert Fastenaekens is known primarily for his night-time studies of urban and post-industrial landscapes.

In 'Essai Pour Une Archéologie Imaginaire' - meaning 'A Test for Imaginary Archeology', the most magical of titles I think - he's continued this work, but focusing on the industrial site of Lorraine rather than depicting urban environments.

As in his previous work the photographs has a theatrical side as well as a very particular sense of time - 'that of a rhythmic hold between two beats' - becoming 'both more monumental and more bare'.

"They also revealed to the artist a world of imagination, in sites which are hardly an invitation to contemplation.

Motorways under construction, nuclear power stations and other industrial sites rise like the vestiges of lost civilization and take on a dimension of almost mythic stature."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

more of fastenaekens book on the publisher website
www.arpeditions.org