This work explores the ability of photography to connect interior and exterior dimensions. I expand this reflection through the metaphor of containment, using the ideas of the miniature and the gigantic. Gigantic as landscape (container) and the miniature as an object (contained). Nature captured in a photograph is always an act of irony — the view from one side suppresses any other view and the distance between the object and its context of origin is irrecoverable. Using the minimum and the complete number of elements, necessary to construct a collection composed of photographic objects I aim to create an autonomous world of nature idealized, a collage made of presents and a past constructed from a set of presently existing pieces. The images presented capture a landscape through the object of that same landscape. This is a play on the body as the primary mode of perceiving scale. When confronted with the gigantic we search for traces of the human. While holding a miniature object, our body becomes the landscape.
Image of the Conference (Un)Common Heritages. Non-anthropocentric perspectives and legacies for more-than-human futures, College of the Arts, University of Coimbra (2025).
Photography and collage
© Sónia Mota Ribeiro
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