The Diminishing Present
September- October, 2007
Moonless midnight on a deserted beach –
deserted, but far from empty. Here, a tether-ball pole that looks like the
ensign of a losing army once unfurled from it, intensifying the negative
presence of thronging sunworshippers. Rows of thatched sunshades like magic toadstools
sprung up under the light of the moon. But there is no moon. Where is it coming
from, the light that illuminates the silent dunes so the objects scattered on
them cast a suggestive shadow, and every squiggle, track and furrow left in the
sand is highlighted like hieroglyphic graffitti?
No, it’s not computerized contrast enhancement
– Portuguese-born, Macau-raised, London-residing photographer Edgar Martins never
goes photoshopping; he claims that the only light he uses is what his subjects bring with
them, though, as you can imagine, his exposures are really long. So what is it, then? Turns out that this particular beach (it’s in Portugal ) is actually situated right
next to a huge soccer stadium whose wasted wattage makes
the sand glow, glow, glow, while the night sky retains its intense blackness.
Thou shalt not set up thy shot, is Martins’other
procedural point of honor though it’s hard at first to believe that chance and
luck alone placed the little old lady selling bunches of bright colored balloons
in that particular time and place (but an out-of-frame stadium certainly improves the
odds). Wooodplank-shuttered ice cream stands suggest the machine-gun bunkers
that mowed down allied soldiers on the beaches of Normandy . Is this space or time we’re
seeing, or the point where the two intersect? You have just crossed over into the
twilight zone of “The Accidental Theorist”, Martins' title for
this compelling, uncanny sequence of images.
The other group is called “The Rehearsal of
Space”. It’s about forests and trees, you think, photographed the way such things
usually are, as arching verticals, contrasting textures and tones of
green. But hold on, what is that blurry spot in the background? Morning mist rising in
the rain forest, perhaps, with cute little monkeys chattering away? Guess
again, it’s smoke. Lots and lots of smoke. Martins took these photographs from a
few dozen yards ahead of a rolling wall of fire that devastated the old-growth
forests of Portugal and northwestern
Spain
in summer 2005. So the trees you are seeing are only minutes away from being
consumed and annihilated -- on one or two, you can see the bark charring
before your eyes. What you don’t see, amazingly, is the fiery juggernaut
itself, tongues of flame licking at its prey. (Well, okay, in a couple of them
you do see it, but only a couple.) When that reality has been taken in, you can all
but hear the screeching sirens and shouted orders. Awareness of the impending peril,
real enough for Edgar Martins when he took the pictures, is as disquieting as
the metaphysical tease in “The Accidental Theorist” but not less unnerving just
because in this case, the scary bits happen to be for real. Did I mention that
his photographs are extremely affordable? They won’t be for much longer.
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