wild natural setting
A week in heaven, or just a long week. The brochures advertise unspoilt dreams, deep ventures into the heart of Eden, a wild natural setting. Seven days on holiday, or seven days to make a world. Got there and read the hotel bible.
Thought I was in Eden.
Here is a set of pictures that includes landscapes, nudes, spectacle, and animal encounters. Natural forms that evoke human forms, forms that are shaped, unshaped, and reshaped. The title wild natural setting arose from an online advertisement for holiday accommodation around the Garden Route. The area’s comparison to the Garden of Eden suggests a paradise and the ending of a paradise; a wild collision between leisure and chaos, between rest and encounter.
These pictures were made in the heat of summer, with a certain intensity and determination that could be described as a cold green sweat. I like to think of the style of these pictures as documentary surrealism, which draws inspiration from the surreal works of Man Ray and Hans Bellmer, as well as from the ‘documentary’ impulses of Paul Strand. Through the combination of these styles, I attempted to create a body of work that formed out of being in a place and thinking about the mythology behind its name.
