Photo London

Edward Burtynsky (b. 1955, Canada) is an artist renowned for his sustained investigation of the “indelible human signature” on the planet, caused by incursions into the landscape on an industrial scale. Burtynsky’s large scale aerial photographs reference the sublime and often surreal qualities of human-altered landscapes with an abstracted painterly language.

Ölfusá River #3, Southern Region, Iceland, 2012 depicts the dilemma of our modern existence; representing a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, the human impact shown in translucent blue and green tones, bisected by gold lines, reminiscent of a modernist stained-glass window.

Elger Esser (b. 1967, Germany) is a landscape photographer, associated with the Düsseldorf School of Photography.

Mont Saint Michel VII, 2022 delves into the poetic interplay between history, memory, and landscape, inviting viewers into a meditative world that reflects Esser’s deep connection to France, a country he describes as carrying “history in its landscape like no other.” The work transcend their geographic specificity, blending historical references with contemporary techniques to evoke a sense of timelessness and nostalgia. As Esser explains, “My ambition has always been to make a timeless photograph, one that can age well, far from being datable.”

This approach has been central to his practice since he began his career in 1996, a deliberate decision to situate his work in a poetic realm while grounding it in a strong conceptual framework.

Scarlett Hooft Graafland (b. 1973, The Netherlands) creates surreal, dream-like photographs providing a lasting record of her carefully choreographed, site-specific sculptural interventions and performances in some of the most isolated corners of the earth.

Fish, Madagascar, Belo sur Mer, 2012, taken on the coast of Belo sur Mer in Madagascar shows seven pairs of knees protruding from fishing boats. Many of the men are unemployed in this part of the Mozambique Strait. The sea has been emptied of fish by a foreign fleet, hence there is no other option than to exchange alcohol and cigarettes for frozen fish to be able to eat.

Nadav Kander, (b. 1961, Israel) is a London-based photographer, artist and director renowned for his portraiture and large-format landscape photographs.

Yibin VIII, (Bathers), Sichuan Province, 2007 is an image from Kander’s acclaimed series, ‘Yangtze – The Long River’, which was awarded the Prix Pictet in 2009. Kander made five trips to China to photograph the landscape and people along the banks of the Yangtze River. Kander’s photographs, taken from the mouth of the river to the source, showed the rapid and profound changes underway in China, offering a poignant reflection on the effects of globalization.

Robert Polidori (b. 1951, Canada) is a California-based photographer known for his large-scale color images of architecture, urban environments and interiors.

Ancien Vestibule de l’Appartement de Madame Adelaide, Chateau de Versailles, 1985, from the ‘Versailles: Transitional States’ project documents the transformation of the royal palace from symbol and heart of Ancien Régime France to a monument to modern day museumification. Polidori’s images reveal the ambiguity involved in any restoration project: what happens to a room or structure when the old is made new? Versailles crystallises a very contemporary nostalgia complex. An 18th century palace restored by a modern society attempting to imagine itself as it once was, it is a visual citation of both past and present, a powerful invocation of history and modernity within the confines of a single frame. For Polidori, rooms play a role as ‘memory theaters’ and receptacles for meaning. The paintings, sculptures and decorative elements that embellish the crumbling walls of the palace are symbols of historical displacement, players in the perpetual re-enactment of a simulated past.

Simon Roberts (b. 1974, UK) is a British photographer and artist recognised for his large-format landscape photographs and in-depth studies into diverse conceptualisations of personal and collective identity, and in particular, how our human relationship to landscape informs our sense of belonging and selfhood.

Looking south-east from Chelsea Embankment, 2024 is part of Roberts’ new ‘After London’ series which captures famous city scenes departing from a preoccupation with populated landscapes, instead presenting the capital with empty, de-peopled vistas, in which life is suspended, disconnected from time and space.

The work, films and writings by Cambridgeshire-based artist Esther Teichmann (b. 1980, Germany) picture mothers like caves, sisters like seashells, lovers like moons and tears like waterfalls. Entering the octopus’ darkness of Teichmann’s caverns, we find ingestion and emission, mother and daughter, sister and sister, lover and lover, surrealism’s erotic jolt: the irritant that makes the pearl. Seashells with apertures like cameras. The womb as oceanic. Lovers as moons. Holding as withholding. Day as night. Narratives of loss and desire are entangled like the glistening tentacles wrapped around the bodies depicted. Thinking about our bodies as sites of knowledge production, Teichmann reimagines space and encounters through feminist subjectivity, exploring the relationship between fiction, myth and lived experience.

The Sirens’ Song II, 2024 is part of a series of new textile works - layered and dyed fabrics, sourced from the artist’s mother’s ‘cloth-chest’ in her childhood home (old curtains, bedsheets, and off cuts) are printed as cyanotype prints, sewn together to create unique tapestry collages.