Sarker Protick

This story has two primary characters, a river that represents nature and a community representing the humankind. Here, all these different people have a same voice, the same state. The narrative evolves between men and river and their relationship. It’s intimate and it’s ruthless. We find dependency and destruction at the same time. It’s a contradictory affair. The river gives so much to its people and at times it takes away everything. Riverbank erosion generally creates much more suffering than other natural hazards like flooding; as while flooding routinely destroys crops and damages property, erosion results in loss of farm and homestead land. In the winter of 2011, I travelled to the villages near Ishurdi district. Padma, the largest waterway of Bangladesh flows right beside. At first the place seems abandoned. Drowned and broken houses, floating trees are all that remains. These are traces of life that was once here. Slowly I discover life in the villages. People who are still living here, many as refugee in others land. They have lost their house, farmlands almost everything. Some has left the places as they ran out of all the options.While a global warming, climate change is still being questioned, here, like many other places is facing consequences. Over the years the river changed it’s course. While doing it, it has taken so many. When the monsoon arrives and the river runs fast. The lands get washed away and disappear. Places I have photographed do not exist any more. River erosion continues with dire consequences for this land and community.

Protick’s works are grounded around the ideas of time and space. Hovering between corporeal and meta-physical, his use of light as protagonist creates a truth that is more emotional than factual. It is document only to a suspended reality, where time is perpetually slowed; and we are not just looking, but seeing. Whether working with family, environment or history, Protick’s work consistently deals with Time and how it transforms matter and life. Much of his current work, even including the book I am specifically looking at , is an exploration of him living scenarios and the people seen around himself and his life. Although having a similar narrative construct to the second photographer, he is choosing to take his photos with the aim of showing a more heavenly lighting, showing people with a clear representation of their scenario: “This isn’t something new or something connected to a particular part of the country,” says Sarker Protick, speaking about his recent work, Of River and Lost Lands, which deals with the contemporary relationship between people and nature in Bangladesh, in the context of the devastating damage and loss of land caused each year during monsoon season.

katrin koenning

Melbourne-based photographer Katrin Koenning (Germany) and Dhaka- based photographer Sarker Protick (Bangladesh) live thousands of miles apart. Yet, in Astres Noirs, a collaborative work that comprises their debut photobook, their photographs are interwoven to create a visual dialogue across distances. The images of both artists were taken with mobile phone cameras, of everyday objects and scenes, though were then transformed visually, stripping colour and amping up the contrast, to form symbolic, poetic ephemera. Printed with a lightly glistening silver ink onto matte black paper, the photographs emerge like celestial phenomena from the page. Mysterious and contemplative, the images give evidence to the artists’ passionate exploration of the world around, and, perhaps more significantly, their desire to exchange their findings with another.The photographer’s project idea is driven by anger at policies that elevate short-term profit above the need to make sustainable decisions and safeguard the world for future generations. Katrin Koenning is interested in counter-narratives and and positive ecological imaginaries to highlight our current state of collective urgency. Thus, Swell will not be centralised around a single environmental issue but rather, with the Greenpeace Photo Award, Koenning will create a still and moving image work focused on a number of mini-ecologies across Australia. The work will focus on what is at stake while avoiding expected tropes of disaster-imagery. It will create a space in which things are connected, rather than apart. With a style characterised by hybridity Koenning seeks to expand the limits of the documentary. She introduces visual elements into a dialog to provide context for the topic under discussion. The project becomes a personal narrative about the current state of the world and, at the same time, about nature hanging in the balance.

From personally researching her work further You are visually able to see the huge influence she has from so many different aspect of the world around her. She is, to my mind, so good at finding the light and passion within even the most desperate and desolate scenarios. Her works’ beauty is transdecent within every project of her work, however I chose her piece above, as it has the strongest relation to the book I am looking into. Much of her work really focuses on photographing light withthe intention to construct a story. Her work has more of a magic quality than religious, but it almost makes us question our lives and the passion we should see and feel for life. Her works are clearly edited a-lot and to her mind it is clearly a pivotal part of the final outcomes of her world as a whole. The piece above creates an expatiation of fear yet the outcome of peace, the floating creates a wholesome new outlook on the fatality of death, And instead of showing death as something to be feared, it is seen as something to be accepted.

Astres Noirs

What I decided what I loved about this book itself, is the hugely prominent highlights of silver within every image. It is so different to everything I have see previously within photography books. There is a clear presentation of beauty within every image, there is a sense of magic and power within the compositions. The book too shows a combination of landscape, objects and people which is an area I too am interested within showing. I believe with the clear influence of this book personally upon my work, I will be able to finalise my idea, and form a finalised narrative concept. Between each image their is a religious aspect highlighting a power of god, within the power of his creation. This approach pf almost bringing black and white into the modern century is so interesting, it’s a twist on what a photobook should be as captivating as a fine piece of music—a triumph of form, theme, movement, instrumental coloration, and, of course, the passion of the playing.

Astres noirs is the debut book for both Katrin Koenning and Sarker Protick, artists who live thousands of miles apart whose peculiar photographic wanderings create a hauntingly beautiful dialogue. This book presents photographs taken on mobile phone cameras, devices used to capture their everyday in an impulsive and almost obsessional way, documenting life from their doorsteps to far afield. Their photographs capture the commonplace such as water stains on asphalt, dust clouds and rays of light, and transform these into mesmerising frames – elusive fragments that evoke an imaginary creature, a milky way, a phosphorescent silhouette… presented together, their combined voices lead us on a journey into unexplored territory, somewhere between the everyday and paranormal, between night and day. Amongst enveloping darkness, lightness is revealed, dazzling and miraculously caught by discerning eyes. For their part, Koenning and Protick had been shooting on their smartphones (presumably in colour or, shots then drained of colour), Koenning from Australia, Protick from Bangladesh. Many of their photos are of commonplace things, a puddle, a horse, a bird. Some are more mysterious, more telling: a soft ball of light, a floating body, specks through an airplane window, faces nearly lost to the shiny blur.

My inspiration of black and silver: to my mind this book has been my most influential artists for myself and my project so far. Not only does it allow a concentration on the debate of light and dark, but shows a series of abstract images, displaying the fundamentals of life, and a clear narrative concept. The images are too filled with purpose and stories. I belive If I were to start editing my images in this way, and printed off my book on black paper, this could really benefit my project as a whole, and access a whole new level of photography, different to anything I had previously done or accomplished previously. Both of the artists add in a political theme to their work as well as showing the narrative of light throughout the light and dark. Because of this I believe me assigning the political narrative of not just life, but religion seen within death resurrection and the beginning of life, is a successful narrative construct. I will now start some experimentation of how I can form the similar edits, and colour tones.