David Burdeny

Ancora, the Italian word for "still", is a collection of 30 new photographs made during the fall of 2010 and winter of 2011. Inspired partly by the words of various travel writers and Joseph Brodsky's book "Watermark", David Burdeny revisited many locations and themes from previous images of Japan and courted new areas in Thailand, Vietnam and Hawaii. Alone and moving about by foot, car, boat, motorcycle and happenstance, the artist sought moments he saw and felt as beautiful, delicate and mysterious and recorded them with lengthy exposures shortly before dusk or dawn. As in much of his previous work, Burdeny once again found himself working in rain, fog and mist - marginal conditions that effectively eliminate extraneous background clutter and deep shadow, to provide minimal and slightly surreal presentations. Pushing the themes of 2009 Sacred & Secular, the artist experiments with a more social landscape, incorporating the human form into what would have previously been an unpopulated environment. Photographed from distant vantage points, these figures reference the romantic tradition where small human figures stand in contrast to an immense landscape, thereby reinforcing the notion we are close, but still so far from nature.