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SPINES, Karl Lagerfeld, 2024
The geographical antipode of my hometown lies somewhere in New Zealand — the place where, as children are told, people walk upside down. The farthest possible point, defined not only by distance, but by imagination.
When I travelled there, I encountered a landscape so vast and disorienting that photography felt insufficient. The camera, which promises to record, suddenly seemed incapable of containing what I was experiencing. Landscape photography, in its conventional form, often reduces magnitude into surface, transforming immersion into image.
To confront this limitation, I introduced a mirror into the frame. The mirror interrupts the view, fragments it, doubles it, and reflects parts of the landscape that would otherwise remain unseen. The resulting images construct parallel sceneries — spaces that appear both familiar and unstable. The viewer is invited to spend time navigating the image, negotiating orientation, scale, and perspective.
Rather than presenting the photographs as autonomous windows, the final works are placed over mirrored maps, forming symmetrical compositions reminiscent of Rorschach tests. These maps evoke the act of travel, the encounter with the unknown, and the long history of imperfect tools humans have used to interpret reality and soften the fear of immensity. Geography, like photography, becomes not a neutral description, but a projection — a way of organizing what exceeds our understanding.
Antipodes reflects on distance — geographical, perceptual, and conceptual. It questions the authority of landscape photography and its claim to describe the natural world. Instead of offering a transparent view, the series proposes a layered experience in which perception is partial, mediated, and constructed.