Traces of Time

Castello, Tuscany, Italy, 2012
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, Italy, 2012
Palazzo R. Torino, Italy, 2012
San Marco Dawn, Venice, Italy, 2012
San Marco Night, Venice, Italy, 2012
Abandoned Villa, Toscana, Italy, 2012
Palais Garnier, Paris France, 2012
Place de l'Opéra, Paris, France, 2012
Ponte alla Carraia, Florence, Italy, 2012
San Geremia, Palazzo Labia on the Grand Canal, Venice, Italy, 2012
Gondola Station III, Grand Canal, Venice, Italy, 2012
San Giorgio Maggiore with Gondola Station, Venice, 2012
November Sky, Côte d'Azur, France, 2012
Carnon-Plage, France 2012, 2012
Oyster Racks, Mèze, France, 2012

Artist Statement

These photographs depict a variety of iconic cityscapes, rural landscapes and interiors in Italy and France. They formally hover somewhere between past present and future, inviting the viewer to question the historical value of these places and how we as tourists experience them. Cities and landscapes are like living organisms, they continuously evolve, grow, die and mutate. I’m interested in revealing the invisible features of these places that are hidden behind progress and 21st century conveniences.

While the title “Traces of Time” initially refers to temporality as understood in relation to mortality and finitude, it also suggests a reversal of that by re-reading or looking back at history and historical images. Often referencing historical vantage points found in period paintings, etchings and postcards, the images don’t look like the spaces depicted. From a slowly decaying Tuscan Villa and French pier, to an extravagantly renovated Venetian Palazzo, these images are intentionally nostalgic.

In the field, I would walk, drive and let happenstance find my way. Often waiting for hours or even days for the proper skies to form, a crane to swing out of the way or the city to rest, I’d find inspiration in the simplest of places. Certain colours have been drained of life while others are used to prop them up – referencing the fall and winter months in which I made this work. But above all, these images are about the anticipation and wonder you get when traveling to a place for the first time.

Traverse

Hookipa Beach, Hawaii, 2011
Rising Moon, Maui, Hawaii, 2011
Setting Moon, Maui, Hawaii, 2011
Breaking Surf, Hookipa, Hawaii, 2011
Snorkeler (After Misrach), Maui, Hawaii, 2011
Floating Village, Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia, 2012
Reclining Buddha, Bago, Burma, 2011
Fishermen, Amarapura, Burma, 2011
St. Joseph's, Mandalay, Burma, 2011
Buddha, Bagan, Burma, 2011
Sweepers, West Lake, Hangzhou, China, 2011
Shanghai Skyline (Dawn), China, 2011
Office Tower, Shanghai, China, 2011
Night Market, Old Shanghai, China, 2011
Mesh, South China Sea, 2011
Man Watching Sunrise, Hangzhou, China , 2011
Traverse, South China Sea, 2011
Boats, West Lake, Hangzhou, China, 2011
Water Taxis, Vihn Ha Long, Vietnam, 2011
Blue Door II, Cat Ba Island, Vietnam, 2012
Pagoda, West Lake, Hangzhou, China, 2011
Thin Dock, West Lake, Hangzhou, China, 2011
Seaweed Farm, South China Sea, China, 2011
Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Burma, 2011
Man Watching Surf, Maui, Hawaii, 2012
Shanghai Night II, Shanghai China, 2011

Artist Statement

This past year, I found myself in the privileged position of working in China, Burma, Cambodia, and Hawaii, traversing across a varied landscape of urban and rural environments. The resulting photographs are a response to my personal sense of wonder about these places, and their inhabitants. Less a linear narrative and more a catalogue of singular moments, this series emphasizes the instant where light, form, texture and colour come together on a particular day.

Working from first light, to dusk and beyond, I was searching for experiences that were, through my eyes, beautiful or profound: a city shrouded in morning fog, a full moon illuminating the ocean, blue evenings, golden mornings, and a lone sailor on the ocean.

Traverse represents the culmination of a decade of photographic experimentation. These new images remain contemplative, and expand upon the formal and natural themes that I have investigated in previous bodies of work. Sky, water, lengthy exposures, atmosphere and vacant space form the underpinnings of these photographs, while the human form gains greater prominence.

This body of work marks a new and profound way of image making for me. The complexities of international travel, combined with the increased rarity of my favored film stock, forced me to experiment on a large scale with a completely digital workflow. The updated optical formulas (with a high-resolution digital back) interpret light with the utmost clarity, but more importantly for me, it does so with immediacy. Many of these images were acquired hand-held, in confined or moving space such as boats, helicopters, ultra light aircraft, and wobbly teak bridges – areas previously off limits to a large format, tripod-mounted camera.

For the first time in many years, I was less of an observer and more of a participant. As such, my attention was diverted away from operating a camera, and towards the experiences, weather, and people around me. I was once again working in the moment; my intentions being to convey a small fragment of how those moments can be beautiful.

Ancora

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, 2010
Morning Snow, Versailles, 2010
Floating Village, Vietnam, 2011
Acqua Alta, Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy, 2010
Ancora, Venice, Italy, 2010
Asakura Beach, Japan, 2010
Campo San Barnaba, Venice, Italy, 2010
Precipice, Nomozaki, Japan, 2010
Dusk Fog, Venice, Italy, 2010
Gondolas, Venice, Italy, 2010
Marie Antoinettes Chateau, Versailles, France, 2010
Kaiten Test Facility, Omura Bay, Japan, 2010
Matrix, Ariake Sea, Japan, 2010
Mudflat, Ariake Sea, Kyushu, Japan, 2010
Oyster Farm, Phu Long, Vietnam, 2011
Paris from the Arc de Triomphe, France, 2010
Red Beacon, Japan, 2010
Swan Boats, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2011
Surfers, Oahu, Hawaii, 2010
Rialto Bridge, Venice, Italy, 2010
Tokyo Tower, Japan, 2010
River Seine from Ponte de Sully, Paris, 2010
Oyster Farm Study 1, Phu Long, Vietnam, 2010
Route 499, Japan, 2010
Oasis, Nomozaki, Japan, 2010
Orange Leaves, Ariake Sea, Japan, 2010
Concrete Harbour Wall, Suo-nada Sea, Japan, 2010
Shrine, Omura Bay, Japan, 2010
Buddha, Ayutthaya, Thailand, 2011
Blue Tarp, Phu Long, Vietnam, 2010

Artist Statement

Ancora, the Italian word for ‘still’, is a collection of 30 new photographs made during the fall of 2010 and winter of 2011 Inspired partly by the words of various travel writers, bloggers, and Joseph Brodsky’s book, “Watermark”, David Burdeny revisited many former locations and themes from previous images of Japan and courted new areas in Thailand, Vietnam and Hawaii.

Alone and moving about by foot, car, boat motorcycle and happenstance, the artist sought moments he saw and felt as beautiful, delicate, and mysterious and recorded them with lengthy exposures shortly before dusk or dawn. As in much of his previous work, Burdeny once again found himself working in rain, fog and mist - marginal conditions that effectively eliminate extraneous background clutter and deep shadow, to provide minimal and slightly surreal presentations - signature to a Burdeny photograph.

Pushing the themes of 2009 Sacred & Secular, the artist experiments with a more social landscape, incorporating the human form into what would have previously been an unpopulated environment. Photographed from distant vantage points, these figures reference the romantic tradition where small humans figures stand in contrast to an immense landscape, thereby reinforcing the notion we are close, but still to far from nature.

The photographs are exposed with a 4x5 and 8x10 field camera onto slow speed colour transparency film. Filtering the light at the moment of exposure, which involves a variety of neutral density and coloured filters, achieves the soft color palate. Further adjustments were made at the printing stage to achieve a common color density throughout this exciting new series of images.

Sacred & Secular

Mont Saint-Michel, France, 2009
Meoto Iwa, Futami, Japan, 2009
Torii, Lake Biwa, Japan, 2009
Macon, Bourgogne, France, 2009
Alexandria, Egypt, 2009
Burrard Inlet, Vancouver, 2009
Dubai II, UAE, 2009
Dubai, Sheikh Zayed Road, UAE, 2009
Forbidden City, Beijing, China, 2009
Grand Canal I, Venezia Italy, 2009
Grand Canal II, Venezia Italy, 2009
Grand Canal III, Venezia Italy, 2009
île du Fort National, St Malo, France, 2009
Los Angeles, CA, 2009
Uummannaq, Greenland, 2008
La Rochelle, France, 2009
Mikawa-wan Nori Farm, Japan, 2009
New York City, USA, 2009
Puxi I, Shanghai, China, 2009
Port Said II, Egypt, 2009
River Nile, Cairo, Egypt, 2009
River Seine II, Paris, 2009
River Loire, 01 Blois, France, 2009
River Seine I, Paris, France, 2009
Suez Canal, Egypt, 2009
Saint-Malo, France, 2009
Tokoname Harbour, 2009
Shanghai Night, 2009
Shanghai I, China, 2009
Shanghai II, China, 2009
Giza, Egypt, 2009
Cairo I, Egypt, 2009
Old Cairo, Egypt, 2009

Artist Statement

Sacred and Secular is an ongoing series of photographs that depict urban edge conditions and built environments throughout the world. In the course of Western architecture and urbanism there is a long history attached to the Ideal, Visionary and the Fantastic as notions to create built space. This lineage is studied from a distant vantage point at the cities edge – looking out and looking in. Taken across the globe, the locations of the images are often distant in latitude, typology and syntax. Commencing with the category defying works of 21ts century “Starchitects” and including recent or ancient manifestations in Dubai, Egypt, China, Japan Greenland, Antarctica, Europe and Canada.

Inspired by my personal experiences as a traveler the images serve to illustrate the often unpredictable link between intention and perception - implying that memory and experience play significant roles in our ability to perceive and thus give meaning to the world around us.

Printed as large format prints, they share a formal device of implied pathways or literal axis of movements between each image. Each edge condition photographed can be, metaphorically speaking, read as the DNA for whatever city/settlement is contained within the image. Earth, air and water are rendered large and neutral - an infinite field on which we build and transform the landscape. Conversely that which we build is depicted as thin, delicate, sometimes cumbersome and without beginning or end.

The images are photographed with an 8”x10” view camera and printed as chromogenic color prints, Each image offers a finely grained density of visual information, rendered in the broad range of tonality only made possible by the 8”x10” inch transparency, Transmounted to Plexiglas the photographs are printed large - thereby welcoming the viewer to experience them from afar and at nose length.

North|South

Adeli Penguins on Fast Ice, Antarctica, 2007
Blue Monday, Antarctica, 2007
Tabulars in Hope Bay, Antarctica, 2007
Giant Tabular Iceberg in Fog, Antarctica, 2007
Mid-day Grey, Antarctica, 2007
Sloped, Antarctic Sound, 2007
Grounded Ship, Cape San Pablo, Argentina, 2007
Weddell Sea Entrance, Antarctica, 2007
Iceberg Remains, Antarctica, 2007
Midnight Sun, Ilulissat, Icefjord, 2007
Monolith, Iceland, 2008
Ilulissat Icefjord, Greenland, 2007
Disko Bay 01, Greenland, 2008
Icebergs Generating Fog, Antarctica, 2007
Perimeter Eduardo Frei Base, Antarctica, 2007
Ilulissat Icefjord 04, Greenland, 2008
Five Icebergs, Antarctica, 2007
Ilulissat Icefjord 01, Greenland, 2008
Mercator's Projection, Antarctica, 2007
Iceberg 01, Greenland, 2007
Iceberg 02, Greenland, 2007
Iceberg 03, Greenland, 2007
Iceberg 04, Greenland, 2007
Iceberg 06, Greenland, 2007
Ilulissat Icefjord 03, Greenland, 2008
Ilulissat Icefjord 05, Greenland, 2008
Ice Filled Lake, Iceland, 2008
Disko Bay 04, Greenland, 2008
Moss Covered Lavafield, Iceland, 2008
Lava Hills, Iceland, 2008
Lava Field and 4x4 Tracks, Greenland, 2008
Five Boulders, 2008
Ilulissat Icefjord 07, Greenland, 2007
Melting Iceberg, Antarctica (Diptych), 2007

Artist Statement

Since 2001, I have focused on water as a singular theme in my work. Having worked on five continents, I have attempted to catalogue through a variety of photographic mediums, the atmosphere, colors, lights, shapes and forms that comprise the world's oceans, seas and shores.

During 2007 and into the spring of 2008, I made several long journeys to the upper and lower extremes of our planet to photograph the shorelines, monolithic ice forms and landscapes of Greenland, Icelandic and Antarctica. Most of these places are arduous to reach, beyond the borders of domestic transportation routes, accessible only by small aircraft or boat. All are endangered to some extent - threatened by tourism, climate change, industry and the hunt for oil. This new series, North/South begins to explore what are currently the most geopolitical and geographically sensitive shorelines on earth.

Formally different than my previous work, but motivated by similar principals, these images attempt to encapsulate both the otherworldliness and the vital reality of the northern seas and oceans. I was drawn to the fragility and grace of the frozen landscape. For me, the work is both a celebration of nature's survival and an elegy.

The majority of the images were made using a gyro stabilized medium format and a panoramic 6x17 handheld camera from the side of small open boats and large ice strengthened ship. Several were made from shore with a tripod-mounted camera. Originally conceived of as a black and white monochrome project with the images shot in Greenland 2007, the unique and surreal color palate of these extreme latitudes compelled the addition of colour. It is a hint of what Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen was alluding to when he wrote:

“Nothing is more wonderfully beautiful can exist than the arctic night. It is a dreamland, painted in the imagination's most delicate tints: its colour etherealized. One shade melts into the other, so that you cannot tell where one ends and the other meets, and yet they are all there.”

Shorelines

Rails, Japan, 2006
Flooded Lake, Japan, 2007
Tokoname, Japan, 2006
Moonrise, Japan, 2006
Wireframe, Japan, 2006
Water Temple, Japan, 2006
Ise's Garden, Japan, 2006
Tori, Sea of Japan, 2006
Burning Sky, 2005
Four Boulders, 2005
Bound, Japan, 2006
Left Pallets, 2005
White Landscape, 2005
Shear, 2005
Apart, 2005
Low Tide, South Beach, 2005
Lone Boulder, 2005
les étapes à l'eau, Armonches (Steps), 2004
Three Stacks, 2004
Plage de Bon Secours aiment M.K. (Beach Pool), 2004
Dark Water, 2004
Vanish, 2004
Full Moon Over Fence, 2004
Eight Piles, 2004
L’ Echelle, Arrmonches (Ladder), 2004
Sous la Reparation, Normandy (Under Repair), 2004
Long Plage, Calais, 2004
Boiler Room, 2003
Bowling Ball Beach, 2003
Two Stacks, 2003
32 Piles, 2003
Breakwater Remains, 2002
Glowing Tide, 2002
Residue, 2002
Point Roberts 5am, 2002

Artist Statement

Made along the shorelines of Japan, Northern France, and the Pacific Northwest this recent body of work thematically continues my interest in the thresholds that divide and connect the sea to land. Through these journeys I attempt to communicate a universality or homogeneity in these disparate locations.

I’m fascinated with the quality of light and the spatial immensity the ocean possesses. I have an enormous reverence for feeling so small in the presence of something so vast, where perspective, scale, time and distance momentarily become intangible. My photographs contemplate that condition, and through their reductive nature, suggest a formalized landscape we rarely see. The glory lies not in the act of this removal or reduction, but in the experience of what is left - sublime experience located in ordinary space: a slowly moving sky, the sun moving across a boulders surface or sea foam swirling around a pylon.

Exposed onto large format black and white film under the soft light of dusk and dawn, the shutter is held open for several minutes at a time, recording the ocean and sky as it continuously repositions itself on the negative, a process both dependent and vulnerable to chance. The resultant image is an accretion of past and present. Each moment is layered over the moment immediately preceding it a single image that embodies the weight of cumulative time and unending metamorphosis.

Drift

Drift 12, Pacific Ocean, Santa Monica, California, USA, 2005
Drift 01, Howe Sound, British Columbia, 2002
Drift 02, Juno Beach Courseulies-sur Mer, Normandy, France, 2004
Drift 03, Santa Monica, California, USA, 2004
Drift 04, Sea of Japan, Kanazawa, Japan, 2005
Drift 05, Starboard View from the Klickitytat, Washington, USA, 2005
Drift 06, Spring Field, Sanford, Canada, 2001
Drift 07, Pacific Ocean, Northern California, 2006
Drift 08, Pacific Ocean, Kashima, Japan, 2005
Drift 09, Paris-Plage, Le Touquet, France, 2004
Drift 10, Grand Beach, Manitoba, Canada, 2001
Drift 11, Mustard Field, Carman, Canada, 2001
Drift 13, Pacific Ocean, California, USA, 2005
Drift 14, Pacific Ocean, Mendocino, California, USA, 2004
Drift 15, Greenland From Seat 12K, Boeing 767, 2004
Drift 16, North Sea, Dunkerque, France, 2004
Drift 17, Pacific Ocean, Seaside, Oregon, 2002
Drift 18, Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France, 2004
Drift 19, Kyoto, Japan, 2005
Drift 20, English Channel, Calais, France, 2005
Drift 21, English Bay, Vancouver, Canada,, 2003
Drift 22, Sea Of Japan, 2004
Drift 23, North Sea, Oostende, Belgium, 2005

Artist Statement

“Drift” is a series of moving and still photographic images collected during travels through Canada, France, Japan, England, Belgium and the USA. These photographs catalogue the shifting light and color of the world's oceans and shorelines. Using a variety of analogue and digital mediums that closely parallel racetrack photo finish technology, the images invert conventional photographic motion/time relationships. My intention is to present motion rendered still, and still rendered in motion, graphically revealing the underlying rhythms and patterns of the physical world while tracing our navigation through it.