Stek

de Els Martens, Stefan Vanthuyne

How do we look at a photograph of a place when there are no anchor points? How do we approach the surface of a landscape, rendered flat in an image, when there is no significant horizon, or when there are no trees for scale? Onto what do we cling our gaze? (Rocks, solid as they may be, are deceptive in size and therefore unreliable.) Where do our eyes land, coming down from somewhere above? Photographs aren't maps. Their frames are limited in dimension, they easily skew proportions and the only real distance they reveal is the one between the camera lens and its focal point - and even that is misleading. In the end, we have no true sense of the landscape we are looking at, as we are merely looking at photographs of it. 'Stek' is a word that speaks of a certain space, or a certain spot in a certain space. In this book, Els Martens deals with a certain space, through a series of still photographs. By shifting the viewpoint gently to the right, she invites us to truly enter the landscape, to explore and to discover it. But by zooming in and out, she simultaneously challenges us to find solid ground. So we let our eyes float, gently and carefully.