#fatescapes

FATESCAPES, by Czech photographer, Pavel Maria Smejkal—iconic photos without their subjects. Not to deny history of course, but to show how iconic these photos really are: we even recognize their backgrounds.

Maria Smejkal Fatescapes-2009 This body of work manipulates famous conflict photos by removing the main subject that the photo is known for and leaves a simple landscape in place. it raises the question of "what if?" The viewer is confronted with a landscape that they have probably seen many times but in a very different context and if the landscape photo is seen in a singular form then one can easily overlook the events that have taken place there. " I investigate the relationship between documentary photography and archetypal landscape; the search for solid ground in the turbulent world of human existence; the search for the eternal beyond the ephemerality of our bodies and the fleetingness of our events. I ask what it is that we are really doing when we take pictures, when the very next moment our record becomes untrue, and there exists only the present. The work’s goal is to ask many other questions about the photography, our live and history, to provoke to find answers." (Source: pavelmaria.com)

Recognize either of these? answers: #1, #2