BOOK:Fullmoon,Taschen Publications
In “Fullmoon” by Taschen Publications, the conceptual meets the poetic, in more than 260 photographs, Darren Almond catches landscapes around the globe, under the particular light of a full moon. With the shutter kept open for over a quarter of an hour, rivers, meadows, mountains, and seashores are illuminated almost like daybreak, but the atmosphere is different: a mild glow emanates even from the shadows, star-lines cross the sky, and water blankets the earth like a misty froth. The enhanced moonlight infuses the landscapes with a sense of the surreal or the sublime, and with haunting ideas of time, nature and beauty. Unlike the seascapes of Hiroshi Sugimoto, in which the grey of the sea imperceptibly meets the grey of the sky in epically long exposures, Almond’s landscapes have a deep, painterly tonal range that is often autumnal: ochre, rust, faded reds and wintry blues. This book covers all parts of Almond’s fullmoon series from the turn of the century up until today. It features an introduction by Sheena Wagstaff, head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and an in-depth essay by writer and critic Brian Dillon. To complement Almond’s visual meditations, the artist has incorporated lunar-centric texts from a wide range of sources, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Darwin, Lao-tzu, Primo Levi, and Gerhard Richter.-Dimitris Lempesis
