Fullmoon

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Poetic nightscapes: Darren Almond's nocturnal nature series
In Full Moon, the conceptual meets the poetic: British artist Darren Almond catches natural archetypes and silent landscapes in night photographs made under a full moon, with the shutter kept open for over a quarter of an hour. The long exposure time illuminates the landscape almost like daybreak, but the atmosphere is different. There is a mild glow emanating even from the shadows, star-lines cross the sky, and water blankets the earth like a misty froth. The enhanced moonlight infuses the pictures with a haunted quality, casting the landscapes in an unease that is wholly of our time, as a contemporary notion of the sublime. The work is about time, both in its contemplation of timeless qualities in the landscape and of photography as a medium to record its passage.

The book collects roughly 250 images which Almond captured following the full moon around the globe. Natural monuments like Yosemite National Park or the German Isle of Rügen draw links to Romantic paintings, from Albert Bierstadt and Caspar David Friedrich respectively, and the whole series circles around the possibility of Romantic themes today: majestic American mountains, austere Arctic ice fields, picturesque rocks by the seascape in Japan, or, most intimately viewed, the nature of Britain, whose painterly subjects are closest to home. This book covers the complete series started at the turn of the century and continuing today in full-page illustrations, the thoughts and references elucidated in essays on the role of photography in our media-saturated times and on the memories within the landscape that become visible in Almond’s work.

Also available in three Art Editions, all numbered and signed by the artist.