A rising star in the contemporary art world, Edgar Martins will discuss his stunning landscape images from Topologies (Aperture, May 2008) featuring all of his major series—beaches at midnight, forests ravaged by fires, airport runways, and colorful highway barriers, all taken in Portugal, and the desolate terrain of Iceland. Seemingly un-beautiful sites are masterfully transformed into sublimely beautiful landscapes through Edgar Martins’s artful composition and controlled framing: his images of beaches resemble the barren surface of the moon, his photographs of highway barriers look like abstract colorful grids. Martins also likes to push the boundaries of the medium by shooting in “unphotographable” conditions—in pitch darkness, in bad weather, or in difficult areas to access. His original vision explores the unexpected impact of modernism on the landscape while recalling various historical references such as the nineteenth century British romantic paintings, Surrealism or Minimalist Art.
Edgar Martins (born in Portugal, 1977) 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, TheDiminishing Present, was published in 2006. He is represented by the Photographers’ Gallery, London; Betty Cunningham Gallery, New York; and Galeria Graça Brandão, Oporto, and Lisbon, Portugal.
