2025전주포토페스티벌

주제전 Special Exhibition 2025 제18회 전주국제사진제에 여러분을 초대합니다.

국제전 [특별전]

예술감독 - Eric Weeks (펜실베이니아 예술디자인 대학 예술학과장)/ 장소 - 갤러리AP-9 1층

Artist - 빅토리아 삼부나리스(Victoria Sambunaris)

Artist Biography :

Victoria Sambunaris photographs the continuing transformation of the American landscape with specific attention given to expanding political, technological, and industrial interventions. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Radius Books published her monographs Taxonomy of a Landscape and recently released Transformation of a Landscape. She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York.

Artist Statement :

Geography - a fairly recent science - maps the relationships between the earth and its inhabitants. I think of "social geography" as a term to describe my photographic work and methodology. I isolate images of the natural world together with the superimposition of a relentless grid of human interactions and interventions. The meanings of each oscillate and are determined by the other.
For many years now I have been on a personal quest to understand such complex landscapes and our engagement with them.
Essentially, I am recording anonymous modern day monuments that have settled onto the contemporary landscape, telling a conflicted story in geographical, environmental, political and cultural terms. The photographs that I produce question traditional and clichéd notions of landscape, our place within it, and the collective roles and responsibilities in how and why we shape it the way we do.

KOR

Special Exhibition: Victoria Sambunaris

지난 25년 동안 빅토리아 삼부나리스는 오토홈이 장착된 자동차를 타고 미국 남서부를 여행하며 풍경을 기록해왔다. 그녀는 5x7인치 아날로그 필름 카메라를 사용하여 대형 판화로 제작하며 최근에는 비디오 카메라도 함께 활용하고 있다. 이러한 사진 작업은 단순한 기록을 넘어 환경 문제와 촬영 장소의 역사에 대한 연구와 성찰을 포함한다. 이는 19세기 미국 서부를 기록한 칼튼 왓킨스의 작업과도 닮았으며 동시에 인간의 침입으로 변화하는 풍경을 인식하는 점에서 로버트 애덤스의 문제의식과도 연결된다.

삼부나리스의 작품에서 두드러지는 요소는 풍경 속 인간 존재의 미미함이다. 광활한 자연 속에서 작은 등산객이 등장하거나 사구벌레가 푸른 하늘과 수역에 비친 모습과 대비를 이루며 자연의 웅장함을 강조한다. 이러한 장치는 롤랑 바르트가 '카메라 루시다'(1981)에서 언급한 '푼트쿰'의 개념과 맞닿아 있다. 바르트는 사진 속 특정 요소가 관람자를 '찌르는' 역할을 한다고 설명하며 이러한 요소들이 감정적 반응을 유발한다고 주장했다. 삼부나리스 사진 속 인간의 흔적은 바로 이러한 '푼트쿰'으로 작용하며, 우리를 사진 속 공간으로 강하게 끌어당긴다.

삼부나리스는 단순히 중요한 사진을 찍는 것이 아니라 사진을 '만들어' 내고 있다. 그녀의 작업은 단순한 풍경 촬영이 아닌, 지속적인 연구와 관찰 그리고 기후 변화와 환경 문제에 대한 깊은 고민에서 비롯된다. 매년 절반을 도로에서 보내며 쌓은 경험은 그녀의 작품을 더욱 강력하고 의미 있게 만든다. 삼부나리스의 사진은 단순한 미학적 경험을 넘어, 우리가 사는 세상과 자연환경의 아름다움과 연약함을 이해하게 만든다. 그녀의 작품을 통해 우리는 풍경을 기록하는 사진이 단순한 이미지가 아니라, 공간의 역사와 환경적 변화를 담아내는 중요한 매체임을 깨닫게 된다.

ENG

Special Exhibition: Victoria Sambunaris

For the past twenty-five years, Victoria Sambunaris has traveled the southwestern United States, crisscrossing through California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah in a car that is equipped with a roof-mounted tent called an Autohome. Sambunaris spends half of each year on the road, searching out landscapes with a 5 x 7 inch analog film camera, and more recently a video camera as well. Her practice includes deep and extended research on environmental issues, and the history of the places she images.

Sambunaris is a modern day Carlton Watkins (1829-1916), a photographer who spent much of his life following similar pursuits of documentation and conservation of the American West. Her recognition of the contemporary encroachment of man in these once pristine areas is also akin to Robert Adams’ (1937- ) concerns. The natural yet vibrant color of Sambunaris’ prints, and their monumental scale, make these works unique in the pantheon of environmentally-concerned landscape photography.

When viewing these photographs, please look closely and concentrate on the mountain of facts presented. The information starts with the intricate details afforded by Sambunaris’ large format view camera, but that is only the beginning. In most of these works, there are human elements that are dwarfed by the scale of the setting. In one photograph, a dune buggy traverses a vast expanse of yellow sand, sandwiched by a saturated blue sky and its mirror image reflected in a body of water. In another, two seemingly miniature hikers slowly emerge from the vast terrain.

These human traces act in a manner described by Roland Barthes in his book Camera Lucida (1981). Barthes used the term punctum to denote small elements in a photograph that “prick” the viewer, creating an element of surprise. The French philosopher and semiotician wrote “The punctum of a photograph is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)…” Barthes believed that the punctum could only come from an unobserved accident or lucky happenstance, but as a non practitioner he didn’t realize that photographers of Sambunaris’ caliber can will these surprises into existence through dedicated practice, and unwavering observation.

Victoria Sambunaris is making, not taking, truly important photographs. The making comes through her dogged research about the American Southwest, her attention to the complex climate crisis currently unfolding there, her intense travels, and her daily practice of making, making, making. The world learns from her work while we learn about the world. Through Sambunaris’ majestic works we gain understanding about its beauty, and also its fragility.

- Eric Weeks, New York City, 2025