Ashwini Gupte & Huy Lam: Greenland is Blue
“Taking a few moments from my adventure, slowing it down just enough to simply observe - what catches my eye, where does my mind rest? That is what I’m trying to examine. But without a camera in hand, I could miss the details. And without the images, I could forget. Sometimes the connection is immediate, but other times, it is when I get home and sit down to work on my images that the process of falling in love begins. Spending time with my images, working on them in post-production, deepens the intimacy with the place and the experience. Trying to remember how I felt when I took the image keeps me connected with the place long after I have returned from there. And then I go back again to tell another story.”
Greenland is Blue is an exploration of Nature’s curiosities, specifically those found in the Arctic. These northern landscapes are remote, with minimal human context to help us comprehend the enormity of the terrain. Rather than try to capture the vastness through a distant panoramic approach, Ashwini Gupte illuminates the details and leaves the sense of scale up to the viewer’s imagination. Her portrait orientated compositions are antithetical to the traditional landscape orientation, and encourage the viewer to look deeper and further. Simple elements, without peripheral context, can be imagined in the context of our own perspectives and moods.
Ashwini Gupte has a background in engineering and has spent much of her career in the financial and consulting world. While her ‘day job’ requires a structured approach, her photographic work allows her to explore more subjectively and experiment freely. Her photography started with capturing the spirit of adventure, but has since developed to focus on a deeper acknowledgement of the details. Her process begins with the viewfinder, ignoring the distractions and searching for relevance within the camera’s frame, and continues in post-production, amplifying the story.
Huy Lam’s berg sculptures complement Gupte’s photographs, and share a disregard for scale in relation to the icebergs that inspired the works. Instead, Huy Lam presents intimate, mysterious works that activate the spaces they inhabit.
