THE VIRTUAL LANDSCAPE
PORTFOLIOS II
KATHLEEN RUIZ
IT IS THE UNSEEN, INTERIOR STRUCTURES OF NATURE AND THOUGHT THAT INTEREST ME: THE BORDER BETWEEN PHYSICAL, OBJECTIVE SPACE AND INCORPOREAL, SUBJECTIVE SPACE. My work is concerned with issues of restructured reality as evidenced in encrypted messages of presence, absence, and transformation.
zSometimes I work from pictures that I take with a 35mm camera and from photomicrographs. For other work, I create photographs of thoughts—“virtual” objects that I create within the computer. Since these depict objects that do not exist in the physical world, they are essentially photographs from my mind.
PETER CAMPUS
PETER CAMPUS I BEGAN WORKING WITH THE COMPUTER ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, AND SOON FOUND THAT IT ALLOWED ME TO BRING OUT THE QUALITIES OF MY PICTURES THAT I CONSIDERED IMPORTANT I could change color and texture, eliminate some parts and exaggerate others, distort, alter, or invert tonalities, merge images, and fabricate backgrounds. In this way I could make the contents of my pictures more apparent. I like to take objects (my subjects) out of context to reveal something about them, to make a larger point, or a more personal point. Lately, I’ve wanted to show how we sentimentalize nature and, in so doing, erode it.
BARBARA KASTEN
THE ROMAN QUARRY OF EL MÈDOL WAS ONCE A WORKING, INDUSTRIAL MINE, BUT NOW IT HAS BECOME A ROMANTIC SETTING WITH THE AURA OF A CATHEDRAL. Eras, layered one upon another, echo among the stones of Tarragona and resonate from the beautiful void of the quarry itself. A negative cavity in the landscape remains with only a needlelike marker to gauge the missing density that once filled it. Using light and montage,
camera and computer to deconstruct and distort the reality of the site, I have made an image of El Mèdol as it does not exist. The color of gold was used to symbolize magnificence, sacredness, and preciousness; red represents the intensity of the human endeavor to hollow out the void; purple and blue represent the past and the royalty that benefited from the toll of the workman. The panoramic mural monumentalizes the historical function of stone and simultaneously underscores the absence of function that has now become the identity of El Mèdol.
PAUL THOREL
WHEN MAKING A PORTRAIT, I START BY PHOTOGRAPHING A PERSON IN DIRECT LIGHT AND THEN BEGIN THE PROCESS OF ELABORATION WITH THE COMPUTER.
Every effect of form and light that surrounds my portraits is caused by the insertion of an image or detail into the original portrait. The computer allows me to store different images in the same plane and frame. Every stage in the development of a portrait is subject to random influences; the aesthetic result of the encounter between images is only predictable in the imagination. My current work addresses the concept of recognizability. It consists of faces in transformation, at the moment before an expression fades.
