Blackout 17
C-type print
226 x 177 cm
2010
Blackout 07
C-type print
226 x 177 cm
2010
Blackout 13
C-type print
226 x 177 cm
2010
Blackout 08
C-type print
226 x 177 cm
2010
Blackout 12
C-type print
226 x 177 cm
2010
Blackout 01
C-type print
226 x 177 cm
2010
‘Blackout’, presented at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art from Friday 12 November, brings together a remarkable new sequence of images taken in Iceland by British photographer Dan Holdsworth.
Occupying a space between documentary and the make-believe, these photographs, reproduced to a grand scale, transform the elemental terrain of giant Icelandic glaciers as they melt away into a strange, futuristic landscape. Blackout’s awe-striking photographs appear so otherworldly it is almost impossible to believe that these lunar-style landscapes actually exist.
The blue of the sky becomes the deep black of space, while the earth appears in negative, beyond imaginable human time and space. Reconstructing the notion of the romantic sublime for the 21st century, Holdsworth’s practice is consumed with investigating the unknown: pushing the peripheries of time, space, and consciousness beyond the limits of ordinary perception.
Since the late 90s, Holdsworth has developed a reputation as one of the most innovative British photographers currently working with landscape. While his early series concentrate on the quiet moments in everyday spaces: office buildings after work, car parks at night and deserted motorway flyovers his most recent work, as captured in Blackout, explore the natural world defining a modern spiritualism and a humbling reminder of the scope of things yet undiscovered.
