PLATFORM Magazine Issue 02: 'Scapes'

PLATFORM

Anna Paola Guerra April Farnum Cody Cobb Denis Chugunov Guan Zitian Je Seltzer Kate Kirkwood Klaus Leidorf Mario Davalos Mark Peter Drolet Melinda Chan Paola Leonardi Patrick Joust Peter Baker Phillip Kalantzis Cope William Pearce

Issue 02 Scapes

PLATFORM Why hello there lovely readers!

Welcome to the second edition of PLATFORM Magazine: an online magazine dedicated to sourcing and showcasing photographic talent from all around the world. For Issue 02 we chose to set the fluid theme of ‘Scapes’, challenging all you budding photographers out there to interpret this however you wished...And what an exciting range of work has flown our way!

We’re big fans of creativity here at PLATFORM and, let me tell you, we haven't been disappointed in the slightest! It’s an amazing thing to throw a theme out there into the great wide world and see the range of responses it evokes.

But enough chit-chat...it’s better you see for yourselves...

(One last thing before we let you go ahead and feast your eyes upon Issue 02...

Hopefully you’ll all be delighted to hear that we’ve decided to publish the magazine bi-monthly, rather than quarterly, so you’ll be getting a whopping 6 issues a year instead of 4! ‘Woop woop!’ I hear you cry!)

We’ll let you go now...

Happy looking!

Kerry Grainger, Editor The PLATFORM Team. www.platform-mag.co.uk

Jeff Seltzer 42, Los Angeles, California

Photography is... a way for me to show others how I see the world. Or, more accurately, how I want the world to be seen.

jeff@jeffseltzerphotography.com www.jeffseltzerphotography.com http://onlyapicture.tumblr.com/

Cody Cobb 28, From Blanchard, LA, lives in Seattle, WA

Photography is... an optical illusion which can arouse emotion.

www.codycobb.com codycobb@me.com codycobb.tumblr.com

‘‘I feel like I'm living two separate lives. One as a freelance motion designer and compositor in Seattle, WA and the other as a nomadic wanderer of the west coast of America. I would love to eventually commit to being a full-time nomad.

Mark Peter Drolet 40, from Montreal, Quebec, lives in Newmarket, Ontario

Photography is...not always about showing things “as they are”. It is part of our everyday perception of the world, and enables us to hold on to moments, as well as create a sort of historical language that we all have access to. It’s that unpredictable exchange with the world and how organic the results can be that I find exciting. The hunt, the planning, the happy mistakes—they’re all part of the package and they’re different in so many ways for one click of the shutter to the next.

That being said, how you look at photography is often as rewarding as the creating of photography. Being a digester of imagery and a keen member of the audience to so much great work being produced is rewarding stuff. It fuels me to get out there and try new things or build upon common themes that I’ve been tackling for years.

www.mpdrolet.com www.mpdrolet.tumblr.com www.flickr.com/photos/mpdrolet1

Anna Paola Guerra 43, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Photography is...a retrospective vision of an unthought landscape, an emergence of an unconscious collecting process.

www.annapaolaguerra.com www.flickr.com/photos/annapaolaguerra annapaolaguerra@gmail.com

‘‘I think of photography as not belonging just to present tense or the moment you are doing it.

A smell of a place many years ago, music heard somewhere, some words found in a book….

One day this unexpected mix will make sense.

All these things will reveal an external landscape.

The photography made today as a retrospective vision of an unthought landscape, past and future, coexisting in this segment of time.’’

Klaus Leidorf 55, from Germany, lives in Bavaria

Photography is... the possibility to show the world my view of the reality.

Klaus@leidorf.de www.leidorf.de http://www.flickr.com/photos/leidorf

Mario Manuel Dávalos Perdomo 34, half Cuban, half Dominican - Born in the Dominican Republic and lives there, in Santo Domingo

Photography is... a way to cheat time. A remembering tool that isolates what we don;t want to remember. It’s the perfect drug for memory-obsessed individuals like myself. The great thing about nature photography is that the process is as thrilling as the result. Photography is the most beautiful excuse to travel, to ask questions, to harvest curiosity. I see the world differently after I took photography as a main medium.

davalette@gmail.com www.mariodavalos.net www.mariodavalos.com

‘‘I am trained as a fine artist but I have been working in advertising for 11 years. I am currently CEO of Capital DBG. I wish I could devote all my time to photography. I am planning to do so in 2023.’’

‘‘As I said, I am a painter by training but I just could not get myself back in the studio after such long days in the agency, so nature provided a way to go out, make art and be sane.. sort of.’’

Denis Chugunov 23, Barking, London

Photography is... a medium capable of glorifying and denigrating reality.

denis_101@hotmail.co.uk www.denischugunov.com

‘‘A photographer is someone who can hold onto a variation of reality without it fading. If such a luxury exists.’’

Melinda Chan Macau, China

Photography is... Memory of life

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chanmelmel/

Kate Kirkwood 52, born in South Africa, lives in the Lake District, England

Photography is... a form of celebration; each time the shutter blinks, it's a wink to the world, an acknowledgement of wonder.

info@katekirkwood.com www.katekirkwood.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/katekirkwood/

‘‘I live on a farm in the hills of the Lake District in England...In my spare time I'm learning about sheep dialects and on fine days I run naked in the woods and on the fells.’’

Patrick Joust 35, from Oroville, California, lives in Baltimore, Maryland Photography is...like other art forms, its own language. Sometimes there is a tendency to try and sum up what a picture is or what it means in words and while such efforts can be worthwhile, it’s important to let a photograph stand on its own. Context can be great, but it depends on how it’s applied and sometimes meaning from a piece of artwork can be lost by over talking it.

A couple months ago I rewatched the documentary William Eggelston in the Real World. I find it interesting that Eggleston, as shown in the documentary, is so difficult to talk to about his work and photography and art in general. This is especially interesting given the fact that, these days, writing/talking about your work, giving it a sense of context, is considered almost more important than the work itself. In the documentary, Eggleston, when pressed on the subject, reacted grumpily and with a sense of amazement at the attempts of others to describe the indescribable in a picture.

I definitely think it’s worthwhile to try and write and talk about art, but I’m sympathetic to Eggleston’s point of view because I do think it’s impossible to truly explain a good piece of artwork in words. When I think of a lot of writing about art, even at its very best, it seems to scrape around the edges, to lock in on a tangent or something, all done very well, but ultimately missing the target.

When it comes to my own thoughts, writing, and conversations about photography I find that I tend to talk about the peripheral elements associated with it. I’m focused on process, timelines, cameras, developing, etc., but it’s actually very difficult to talk effectively about the pictures. I don’t begrudge talking and writing about these peripheral things because I think they are interesting in and of themselves. Cameras as objects, for instance, are beautiful and amazing things because of what can be created with them. I think many people’s fascination with them is understandable, but that fascination is often a proxy for the real thing because the real thing, the pictures, can’t adequately be explained. Words can put limitations on other expressive mediums, especially if we find ourselves paying closer attention to what’s written than what’s being shown in a painting or photograph. Because the two things, written language and photography, have “nothing to do with the other,” as Eggleston says, it’s possible even to degrade a work by too much contextualizing and exposition. The bottom line is that photography is something that should be strong enough to stand on its own. It shouldn’t need to be supplemented by context to convey a feeling or a message or whatever it is that photographs do that make us want to keep looking.

: patrickjoust@yahoo.com Patrickjoust.com www.flickr.com/patrickjoust patrickjoust.tumblr.com/

Peter Baker 34, from Blissfield, Michigan, lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Photography is...is, for me, a reminder of the way things are, and the things we’ve done. It’s the art of documentation.

peter@peterbaker.net http://peterbaker.net http://ptrbkr.com, Twitter.com/ptrbkr, Instagram.com/peterbaker

William Pearce 21, from Norfolk, lives in Surrey

Photography is... challenging

williampearcephotography@gmail.com www.williampearcephotography.com http://willpearce.tumblr.com/ @willjpearce

"Coming form norfolk i was often surrounded by nature, i think this is what drew me to landscape photography. since then i have found myself focusing on the relationships between nature and the man-made, how they co-exist or conflict within a space"

Phillip Kalantzis Cope 30, born in Athens, Greece, grew up in Australia, currently in NYC

Photography is...not a profession.

www.phillipkalantziscope.com

April Farnum 38, from Chicago, Illinois, lives in Denver, Colorado

Photography is...Life.

aprilfarnum@gmail.com http://www.aprilfarnum.com

‘‘I like the idea of preserving something. A space, a time. I mainly shoot in urban settings (unconventional people, decaying infrastructure, remnants of old advertising, architecture, street art), as well as food and interiors. I’ve always been drawn to capturing a moment. Something that would have happened with or without me.’’

Guan Zitian 35, Beijing

Photography is...something like love, reality, fantasy, cruel, beautiful.

Paola Leonardi 32, from Italy, lives in London, England

Photography is...my job, my passion and my life. Photography is something I cannot live without as it is the way I develop myself as a person

http://www.leonardiphoto.com http://www.borderlandstheedgesofeurope.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.facebook.com/PaolaLeonardiPhotography

PLATFORM Visit www.platform-mag.co.uk for information on how to submit work and be a contributor in Issue 03: ‘You and Me’

https://twitter.com/PLATFORM_Mag https://www.facebook.com/pages/Platform-Magazine/536023629761057