The Diminishing Present, Edgar Martins' photography

Edgar Martins The Diminishing Present

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Untitled, 2008

Artist statement

Produced between 2005 and 2008, Martins’ painterly effects reach an apogee in his images of forest fires shot in Portugal. It is hard to believe that representations of ruin could be so seductive – this is especially true of those photographs shot along a creek, where the vivid greens of vegetation are just being invaded by flame, which drips off the riverbank and is reflected in the water.

In those photographs where the fire is more advanced, Martins achieves rich atmospheric effects. Thick haze focuses our attention on the foreground, as in the shot of a pair of pine trunks rising out of the ferns and set against a background of smoke. Atmospheric conditions have a pronounced effect on pictorial space. Only a couple of images have any suggestion of spatial depth - in one, we are looking up a blackened valley; in another, a road disappears into the smoke. The rest are foreshortened, focusing our attention on the qualities of line, the tonalities of smoke, the colours of flame. Martins’ intentions in these images were not only pictorial, of course; there is a contemporary anxiety to them as well. Portugal’s 2005/2008 fires were the result of extended drought and extreme heat; many believed them to be an expression of global climate change. Moreover, they could be seen as evidence of environmental mismanagement: much of the forest was eucalyptus, a fast-growing but extremely flammable tree that is frequently planted in reforestation projects. Martins was in search of this story as much as the pictorial effects in these images of fire.

There is a tantalising convergence of subject and medium in these smoky photographs. They both portray and are made possible by one material suspended in another: their subject is suspended carbon; their medium photographic emulsion. Martins went to considerable effort to capture these images: he completed a residency and training with fire fighters in Portalegre before being allowed to work in the field with them, and he coordinated his work with the National Fire Protection Unit. This effort, he recounts, was expressive of commitment he generally makes to the ‘sites, places, and people’ he photographs. In the case of the Portugal fires, it enabled him to work close-up to the flames, using a still wider-angled lens than he typically uses. Proximity to fire resulted in a technical accident that accounts in part for the quality of the images: in extreme close-ups of the flames, the film was fogged by exposure to intense heat, which reinforces the atmospheric quality of the smoke. In a sense, the subject became the medium here – the heat is presented as much as re-presented; it enacted a technical transformation that was encoded in the film itself. As with previous works, The Diminishing Present is a photography of poised turbulence; full of stillness and silence yet haunted by mobility.

Whilst structured within the pictorial traditions of arcadian and romantic paintings, and for all their historical evocation and appeal to the sublime, these images reflect on both the physical death of the landscape and the death of the landscape as a pictorial ‘theme’.

About the photographer

Born

1977, Évora, Portugal

Nationality

Portuguese

Based in

United Kingdom

About Edgar Martins

Portuguese by birth, Edgar Martins grew up in Macau, China, where he published his first novel entitled Mäe, deixa-me fazer o pino. In 1996 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he later completed an MA in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art.

He has exhibited extensively throughout Asia, America and Europe and has received numerous awards for his photographic and literary work. His work is represented internationally in various high-profile museums, public, corporate and private collections.

His first book Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies was awarded the Thames & Hudson and RCA Society Book Art Prize. Selections of images from this book were also awarded The Jerwood Photography Award in 2003.

In The Diminishing Present and Approaches, Martins’ following monographs were launched in 2006. An exhibition of this work has toured Lisbon, New York, Oporto, Madrid, and elsewhere.

In spring 2008 Aperture Books launched Martins’ most comprehensive monograph to date. This work was exhibited internationally; in Portugal, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Brazil and many other countries, institutions and museums such as PS1, MoMA, FOAM, Nantes Art Biennial, and others.

Martins was the recipient of the inaugural and much sought after New York Photography Award (Fine Art Category) in May 2008. He was also selected for the Terry O’Neil Award (United Kingdom), the prestigious BES Photo Prize (Portugal) and awarded a National Media Museum Bursary Fund (United Kingdom).

More recently Edgar Martins was awarded the SONY World Photography Award in the landscape category.

Martins is considered by United States’ art critics as ‘one of the most influential artist of his generation, working within the medium of photography’.