Edgar Martins: Topologies

With artful composition and controlled framing--but no digital manipulation--Edgar Martins creates sublimely beautiful views of often unbeautiful sites. Minimalist nighttime beaches, forests ravaged by fires and Iceland's stark terrain have all served as subjects for his large-scale color photographs. He also explores the unexpected impact of Modernism on the landscape, including startlingly graphic airport runways and colorful highway barriers that, at first glance, read like abstract murals. Certain themes recur throughout Martins' work. A sense of place and alienation from it. A sense of mystery-vividly embodied in scenes such as a woman with a bouquet of balloons on a deserted shore. And a sense that something unsettling has just happened or is about to happen--a fire, an accident, a close encounter with some unspecified danger. As John Beardsley notes, "Some images are what we habitually expect photography to be--evidence of the world as we think we know it--while others obscure their subjects through an illusionism that borders on magic."

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 127
Publication date: 2008-04-01
Measurements: 9.55 x 11.2 x 0.68 inches
ISBN: 9781597110570

Edgar Martins grew up in Macau, China; he has lived in England since 1996. His first limited-edition book, Black Holes and Other Inconsistencies, was awarded the Thames and Hudson and RCA Society Art Book Prize; his second, The Diminishing Present, was published in 2006. In 2010 Edgar Martins was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2009 and awarded 1st prize in the Fine Art — Abstract category of the 2010 International Photography Awards. Martins was selected to represent Macau (China) at the 54th Venice Biennale.
Edgar Martins grew up in Macau, China; he has lived in England since 1996. His first limited-edition book, Black Holes and Other Inconsistencies, was awarded the Thames and Hudson and RCA Society Art Book Prize; his second, The Diminishing Present, was published in 2006. In 2010 Edgar Martins was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2009 and awarded 1st prize in the Fine Art — Abstract category of the 2010 International Photography Awards. Martins was selected to represent Macau (China) at the 54th Venice Biennale.
David Campany is a writer, curator and artist, working mainly with photography. David s books include The Open Road: photographic road trips across America (2014), Walker Evans: the magazine work (2014), Gasoline (2013), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (2010), Photography and Cinema (2008) and Art and Photography (2003). He also writes for Frieze, Aperture, Art Review, FOAM, Source, Photoworks and Tate magazine. Recent curatorial projects include Lewis Baltz: Common Objects (Le Bal, Paris 2014), Walker Evans: magazine work (Foto Museum Antwerp 2014), Victor Burgin: A Sense of Place (AmbikaP3 London, 2013), Mark Neville: Deeds Not Words (The Photographers Gallery London, 2013) and Anonymes: Unnamed America in Photography and Film (Le Bal Paris, 2010). David has a Phd and teaches at the University of Westminster, London. For his writing, David has received the ICP Infinity Award, the Kraszna-Krauss Book Award, a Deutscher Fotobuchpreis, and the Royal Photographic Society s award for writing.
John Beardsley is a writer and curator living in Washington, D.C.; he is the Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.