HOMELAND
A pristine skatepark is shot at night using only ambient light. In the resulting landscape images the surrounding streetlights throw intersecting pools of light; the lines are softened by diffuse moonlight. If the forms are organic, the environment is still entirely artificial.
A number of portraits, in black and white, of young men who skateboard in the park. Each stands alone before the photographer’s neutral background.
The landscape photographs belong to an ongoing series that Lozza has been taking for many years: landscapes captured mostly at night, using only the light in situ. They are by necessity long exposures, so the photographer is working blind; he only sees the image after he has taken it. The resulting images are mysterious, puzzling even, as they are illuminated by light sources we do not normally see. Lozza’s landscapes suggest imagined settings akin to a David Lynch film, locations in which tensions are heightened and the everyday can become fantastical. These could be mental images, or scenes from dreams where objects and places are divorced from a coherent context. Non-places onto which the future can be projected.
Skateboarding is an international youth pursuit. A painful sport that requires commitment, it builds its own communities in which other social differences have little or no relevance. Lozza’s subjects are united by this community, which also forms them as singular characters. The photographer portrays the group at a moment rich with possibilities. Young men, who have dreams and hopes yet to be realised. The empty skatepark is a darkened stage that waits to be filled by a cast of men as they pass through a formative phase of their lives.
Aoife Rosenmeyer
Book HOMELAND (2014) sold out
64 pages (17 x 23cm)
offset print & hard cover
Edition of 500
signed & numbered
design: Marc Kappeler, Moiré
ISBN: 978-3 9524139-5-1
Hakuin Verlag, Switzerland