Landscape Stories Issue 4. (Remains to be Seen)

A selection of images from my new photo series 'Remains to be Seen' has been published with an original poem in issue 4 of the excellent on-line magazine 'Landscape Stories'. I have been a huge fan of this magazine for a while now and I am honored to be included in this new issue which explores the idea of Traces.

Created in 2010, Landscape Stories is an independent and free online magazine dedicated to the presentation of stories and photographic work. Their aim is to connect a growing number of readers deeply with fine art contemporary photography. Their goal is to bring together a collection of photographers from around the globe and to present their work to a wider audience. Landscape Stories encourage photographers to offer their vision of the world, relating to a certain topics and themes.

Issue #4 TRACES

Traces is the title of Landscape Stories number 04. Trace, clue, wake. Path, scratch, furrow. Print, brand, footprint. Testimony, memory, documentation. Evidence, finding, remain. From the big and transient proportions of Earth and landscape’s skin scars, we go closer until we can decipher and try to understand the wounds that mark the face of a human being. The words that come to our mind are those by Wemer Herzog, about some faces from the film “Herz aus Glas” that recall landscapes.

“I’d be prudent, I’d rather think about the strange phenomena that one has when he looks at some pictures from the 50s, for example. One realises straight away that they are faces from the 50s. In reality I can’t think of faces as if they were like landscapes, maybe I’m particularly allergic to the idea because Kinski always shouted at me when I filmed landscapes. He told me that the human face is by far the most fascinating landscape”

The publication of this personal body of work, which is an exploration of loss, comes poignantly on the eight year anniversary of the passing of Tonje Andersen, who was my long time partner and friend - A great artist too, who will always be missed.

Landscapes Stories, Remains to be Seen feature can be found here:

http://www.landscapestories.net/issue-04/022-simon-kossoff?lang=it#1

Landscape Stories wonderful website can be found here.

http://www.landscapestories.net/?lang=en

AUBADE Magazine Issue 4

I arrived home last night from what was a wild road trip (more on this later) to discover I have a couple of photographs published in the new issue of Aubade Magazine, issue 4. With each issue this wonderful magazine gets better and better and it is well worth ordering a copy if you have the chance. As always, many thanks to Chris Turner for all his time and energy creating it. It's a special thing.

Here's the blurb:

"Issue 4 of Aubade Magazine contains art by John Patrick Byrne (Painter & Playwright) and Mayako Nakamura, photography by Meral Guler, Jan Cieslikiewicz, Fredrik Holmer, Don Hudson, Jules Dernier amongst notable others, writing by C C Turner and J J Turner, some Egglestonian photos courtesy of NASA and a public warning section illustrating the clear dangers of parking beneath bridges in Bethnal Green, London."

See a preview or order a copy of AUBADE Magazine issue 4 here:

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/202221

Joplin, MO

A huge Tornado passed close to Overland Park on Sunday night, shaking our home as the sirens sounded. I heard this morning that this Tornado hit hard the southern Missouri city of Joplin, causing massive devastation. I know Joplin, having passed through it on one of my route 66 trips made a few years ago. I have considered driving down there today, but it is not possible because I need to prepare for my trip to NYC early tomorrow morning. Here are a few of the images I made in and around Joplin on that trip. My thoughts go out to the people of Joplin in this desperate time.

"A massive tornado that tore through the southwest Missouri city of Joplin killed at least 89 people, but authorities warned that the death toll could climb Monday as search and rescuers continued their work at sunrise.

City manager Mark Rohr announced the number of known dead at a pre-dawn news conference outside the wreckage of a hospital that took a direct hit from Sunday's storm. Rohr said the twister cut a path nearly six miles long and more than a half-mile wide through the center of town, adding that tornado sirens gave residents about a 20-minute warning before the tornado touched down on the city's west side.

Much of the city's south side was leveled, with churches, schools, businesses and homes reduced to ruins.

Fire chief Mitch Randles estimated that 25 to 30 percent of the city was damaged, and said his own home was among the buildings destroyed as the twister swept through this city of about 50,000 people some 160 miles south of Kansas City."

Report from KCTV5's news website:

http://www.kctv5.com/news/27984786/detail.html

Video of the storm can be viewed here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13501695

Road Trip: NYC-Niagara Falls-West Virginia-Nashville-Kansas.

Along I-70 East (Truck Stop)

Groom, TX

Ottawa, KS

I-35 East

Road to Rolla, MO

Next week I will be meeting my Mother and Brother in New York City. I haven't seen my family for over three years and I am looking forward to it very much. After flying to NYC we will spend some time exploring the city and then rent a car in Manhattan (booked here) and drive it back to Kansas after first taking a northern detour to visit Niagara Falls, a place I have always wanted to see, but until now, not had the chance. My Mother has never before visited the U.S. and I can think of no better way of giving her a flavor of it's massive scale and geographic diversity than taking a road trip by car.

From Niagara we intend to head directly south through Pennsylvania, making various stops along the way and then traveling the length of West Virginia (weaving the 'Red Roads' which will be the title of a future photo series). West Virginia is one of the poorest and most beautiful States in the union, I hear, and I have longed to see and explore it. We will then begin heading west into Kentucky to the small town of Middlesbrough, a destination chosen by my mother because it shares the name of the northern England City she was born and raised in. From there we will travel south to Nashville before making the last leg of our journey back home to Kansas City. There will, I'm sure be a lot of meandering along the way too and a lot of photography stops, which will I'm positive will be a powerful test of my wife Jenny and my family's patience. It will be a journey of approximately 2400 miles, a distance which anyone from England will find incomprehensibly huge.

The preparations and time leading up to a road trip, for me, is one which is always filled with both apprehension and excitement. It is a time when my confidence photographically is at it's most vulnerable and it forces me to put every previous image I've made under great scrutiny making me ask, what is it that I am ultimately doing here? I try to pre-visualize the trip and plan the work I will make and the things I will see. Experience though, has told me, again and again, this is an impossible thing to do and I know that any road trip should be embarked upon without expectation of any kind, with the exception of faith and trust. I am acutely aware that I am about to enter the unknown where reality will present itself along with all it's myth and legend, in ways I cannot yet imagine, with whatever photographic projects and ideas I have in mind. It's a beautiful, exciting and pure experience, close to that of a meditation where the present will be continuously unwrapped from moment to moment. America by car with little more than my companions, a map, camera, note book and those dreams.

Gas Station, MO (I-70)