With the proliferation of cameras on smartphones and amateur Instagram accounts with millions of followers, it can seem sometimes that photography belongs to the masses. In the latest collection of his photographs, British photographer Darren Almond reminds us of the power a well-conceived and executed phootgraph can have.
The latest book from Taschen featuring his work, Fullmoon, is made up of more than 260 photographs of landscapes around the globe awash in the light of a full moon. Using exposures of around 30 minutes, Almond gives us landscapes that transform nature into something both recognizable and other-worldly.
Darren Almond
"The light in Darren Almond's full-moon photographs ... persists, enveloping and saturating the territory photographed," writes the critic Brian Dillon in his essay in the book.
Darren Almond
At first glance some of the Almond photos can look like they come out of a travel guide. Yet there is something unmistakably eerie about them—as if humans have been removed from the picture.
Some of the landscapes photographed by Almond have already been photographed countless times since the advent of the photograph. However, his photographs manage to take those very same familiar landscapes and imbue them with a sense of seeing them for the first time.
One of the elements of nature most visibly transformed by the moonlight is that of water. From photograph to photograph its interaction with the light of the full moon varies immensely.
Darren Almond
The book is full of provocative quotes about different ways to observe nature from writers and artists including as Joyce, Goethe, and Coleridge. One of the more poignant comes from Gerhard Richter: "When we look on mountains as beautiful, although they’re nothing but stupid and obstructive rock piles; or see that silly weed out there as a beautiful shrub, gently waving in the breeze: these are just our own projections, which go far beyond any practical, utilitarian values."
