Awoiska van der Molen: “Sequester” – Photographic Meditation of Volcanic Landscape in Canary Islands

Awoiska van der Molen (1972) is a Dutch visual artist, photography as her main tool. In 2019 Van der Molen was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, the global award in photography and sustainability. In 2017 her work was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and was she the recipient of the Larry Sultan Photography Award 2017. Van der Molen was awarded the Japanese Hariban Award in 2014 and was finalist at the Hyères Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in France in 2011.

Netherlands –

I stay in places, locations far from the outside world. Being in this world -and the long time spent there in solitude- brings me in a kind of ‘zero state of being’. My photos originate in this space where intuition wins from thoughts and words, I take the camera out of my bag to photograph only when I feel I arrived at the most basal state of our own nature and being. After that comes the seeing, and the photographing.

The process of a slow but intense search for a basal core in what I photograph is prolonged in the darkroom where I handprint my works small and large scale fiber prints.

The step to make a book of my photo works took quite a while. How to translate the often dark, tactile and introvert images in a book? I could not imagine how. Working with Hans Gremmen on making ‘Sequester’ worked out wonderfully. The paper used for the printing, the folded dust-jacket cover, the rough carton cover inside, and the black paper sections in where you are drawn into this dark world. Hans Gremmen understood how to treat the photo works.

 

Written & Photography feature – Awoiska van der Molen 

Published by Fw Publishing, Awoiska’s ‘Sequester’ was selected as the ‘Best Book of 2014’ for Photo Eye by Manik Katyal

 

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