ZONE

ARTIST RESIDENCY BORSEC, ROMANIA



A dead zone. A landscape devoid of people. Broken items. Crushed footprints in the snow. A frozen river,
beautiful and terrifying. Zone is thislandscape of contrast and shadow.

Humans presence is obsolete
and easily missed, slipping into the past. What space they once occupied is being filled by the organic, the
non-human. During the heart of Winter I spent two weeks at an artist residency ‘Inside Zone’ in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania.
My hopes were to use this tim to reflect on my process of research, making an actualisation of a body of work. Open to any stimulus for inspiration I spent my first few days exploring both
the landscape and my conservative use of stric technical settings with my gear. Experimentation is ke to learning and with this refrain in mind I pushed myself to rethink what I thought I knew.
I spent hours trekking through snow laden pine woods returning in the evening to my host village, th direction of which was obviously evident from the chorus of barking. The old part of town was
semi-abandoned and its main street was a facade of broken homes. A few smoking chimneys was the signs of life inside.
Inspired by the feelings of isolation, and by my stark
surroundings I photographed this semi-fictional
landscape I had envisioned. Abandoning the truth
(people were present in my apocalyptic landscape) was an attempt to play with what I knew. Shooting in black and white was also a step outside of my comfort zone never had I bleached the world of colour.

The project and my time spent at the residency was
focused on process. The result was not so important
to me, there was no final product in mind. While it is
important to envision the purpose and social impact of a body of work for a wider audience, I believed working outside of these preconditions allowed for full and free experimentation.

Despite this the final body of work has formed its own voice. The images portray an apocalyptic landscape of lines, deep shadows and eternal pine. For me, this landscape is reminiscent of the future, pos climate-breakdown. The darkness apparent in th images may be an echo of the human loss from the
world.