Nemo Nonnenmacher
Artist Feature
Every week an artist is featured whose single image was published by Der Greif. The Feature shows the image in the original context of the series.
Matthew Rahner - Eminent Domain
Sep 17, 2014
Inspired by documentary photographers, my work stems from a deep interest in the ability of photography to reflect the complex subjectivities that makes both participant and viewer complicit in what happens in our world. Working within traditions of image making, I have set out to explore the concept of eminent domain and its implemented realities. The series Eminent Domain is about the Wendall-Phillips neighborhood in urban Kansas City, Missouri, located at 27th Street and Prospect Avenue. In 2011, the city began to search for suitable locations to house the new East Patrol Police Department and Crime Lab. 24 potential sites were considered before settling on a 3-block portion of Wendall-Phillips. Of the 24 sites considered Wendall-Phillips had the highest rate of occupancy, with 43 occupied homes. While the process was never legally implemented, the city bought out homeowners under the guise of eminent domain. The majority of residents, unable to fight for their property and unaware of legal protections, accepted the city’s initial offer. For residents who rejected offers, the city arranged to have their homes condemned. Eminent Domain began with the knowledge that one day there would be a void: occupied homes would become empty, demolished, then the remnants hauled away. I began this series with portraits of the neighbors and residents of Wendall-Phillips. After all had moved away, and the neighborhood was vacant, the pictures became records of demolition and removal. As a whole, the photographs from this series capture the physical manifestations of eminent domain. They are evidence of a forced relocation. Through this work I am exploring a power construct, which allows one entity to forcefully, yet legally, relocate another against their will.
Artist Blog
The blog of Der Greif is written entirely by the artists who have been invited to doing an Artist-Feature. Every week, we have a different author.
Published in:
»Der Greif #7«
Impressions, Residues and In-between
Sep 24, 2014 - Matthew Rahner
I present you now with a selection of current work. I am thinking a lot about the landscapes at the edge of towns and cities. These places mix rural and urban, necessity collides with ingenuity, and nature recovers what it has lost. I find a similarity between this threshold, and that of photographs forgotten. News cycles as the world cycles. Photographs become dusty, as do buildings, as do memories. I seek to resurrect the landscape, and old pictures, and make them equal. This work is in progress. Check back soon. Thanks for looking. It's been a pleasure to share with everyone over the past week!
Archive Collective
Sep 23, 2014 - Matthew Rahner
Archive Collective is a group of dedicated, young artists living in Kansas City, Missouri. Through community education and outreach Archive Collective is stewarding the discourse of contemporary photography in the Mid-West. The group holds innovative exhibitions, public critiques, gallery visits, artist talks, panel discussions, and more. Their most recent exhibition, TRADE LOOK SHIP at Trap Gallery (Kansas City), is a collaboration with artist's groups from Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Throughout TRADE LOOK SHIP the audience is invited to handle the photographs, printed on postcards, and restructure the sequence, thus creating unique associations and meanings. The exhibition will travel to the participating cities, continuing to evolve along the way. Archive Collective accepts submissions to their blog, and currently seek critical writings concerning photography.
1/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
2/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
3/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
4/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
5/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
6/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
7/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
8/8 Good Earth: Photographs from Missouri’s Lead Belt
Ben Hoste – Good Earth
Sep 22, 2014 - Matthew Rahner
Ben Hoste's documentary project Good Earth: Missouri's Old Lead Belt peers into life around Missouri's shuttered lead mines. A self described "non-fiction photographer" Hoste is "interested in what it means to live in a community established and defined by an industry that no longer exists, especially one that is so tied to the land itself". Hoste is completing a trilogy of projects based in Missouri: Plato, Good Earth, and the Sinews of Peace. Currently, he is expanding upon his project Plato, which documents the people at the median-center of the U.S. population, based on the 2010 census. Hoste is raising funds to distribute a self-published photo-zine showcasing his photographs in Plato. To buy a copy of his zine visit his Kickstarter, and to see more of his excellent photographs take a look at www.benjaminhoste.com.
Drew Nikonowicz – This World and Others Like It
Sep 19, 2014 - Matthew Rahner
Drew Nikonowicz is an artist currently pursuing his BFA in Photography at the University of Missouri in Columbia. In This World and Others Like It, Nikonowicz examines the possibility of new frontiers using analog photography and simulated, computer generated imagery. Nikonowicz's work explores the sublime landscape as mediated through technology, paralleling Albert Bierstadt's landscape paintings of the American Westward Expansion. Bierstadt made claims of representational integrity, yet his embellished paintings were visions of an ideal landscape. Similarly, Nikonowicz's pictures mimic reality, thus allowing the viewer to experience a place they know can not exist, but wishing that it did somewhere, maybe in another world. If you'd like to see Nikonwicz's prints in person, they are being printed and displayed during photokina in Cologne. His work can be found at the Monochrom Germany booth, in Hall 2.1, booth C026. You can also visit his website to see more of his work. Also, Nikonwicz was included in the a process exhibition held by Der Greif, and was published in the accompanying book a process.