Canadian photographer Erik Osberg in an observer. Camera in hand, he spent the last ten months prowling through Scotland, exploring his new home through the perspective of the viewfinder. His exhibition titled RAM, currently showing at Laroche/Joncas, features a series of photographs, a short video, and a collection of photo albums containing snapshots documenting his new life abroad.
Osberg’s city views and landscapes are distinctly unsentimental, devoid of any romantic notions of landscape photography or sense of rustic idyll. Instead he captures the sly hand of human intervention in 21st-century Scotland. In Five Towers, monolithic residential high-rises dominate the horizon as they loom over a well-appointed playground. In Deer and Castle we join the majestic stone sculpture of a deer, gazing on the perfectly maintained park of a stately home. The aerial view of a golf green in Golfers takes on an abstract quality with its perfectly manicured lawn and hour-glass shaped sand trap. But Osberg also sneaks in a bit of humour. My particular favourite is Trash Can Monument, a photograph of a cast-iron garbage can in a city park which proudly displays the name and dates of a benefactor. Ashes to ashes indeed.
Besides documenting human intervention in nature, Osberg also reflects on the medium of photography itself. As low-cost cameras abound, everyone seems to be documenting everything at all times. How do we choose which images are relevant? The photo albums, and to some extend the short video, speak to this point, their random collection of snapshots contrasting with the carefully curated selection of prints on the wall. Osberg’s approach to photography is deliberate, he doesn’t like to repeat motifs. “When I take a photo of a golf green, I make sure it is the best image of a golf green I can possibly take,” says the artist in an interview during the vernissage. “It makes other photos of the same subject unnecessary.” With RAM Osberg makes a case for quality over quantity. Point well taken.
Laroche/Joncas, space 410
Erik Osberg
RAM
September 9 – October 8, 2011
www.larochejoncas.com
