Renate Aller: Ocean and Desert - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1934435813 ISBN 13: 9781934435816

Publisher: Radius Books, 2014

Synopsis

Aller captures the infinitely shifting colors and textures of water, sand and sky

This new project by German-born photographer Renate Aller is an extension of the ongoing series and book Oceanscapes (2010). Aller has continued to make images of the ocean from a single vantage point--for which she is internationally known--but for the last several years, she has also photographed sand dunes in New Mexico and Colorado. She has now paired the resulting images in a fascinating new series that continues her investigation into the relationship between romanticism, memory and landscape in the context of our current sociopolitical awareness. There is both a visual and visceral relationship between the two bodies of work. The desert images also capture visitors to the dunes, who engage in beach activities far away from any large body of water. And while these parallel realities are from completely different locations, the simultaneous, multiple activities on the sloping sand hills appears as if layers of different people and activities were choreographed next to rolling waves of the sea. Aller's first combination of these images was in book form, for a mammoth handmade book that was 36 inches wide. The overwhelming success of that publication has inspired this new trade edition, which features the largest binding that can be mechanically bound, and includes an expanded selection of the work.

Born in Germany, Renate Aller lives and works in New York. Ocean and Desert is her third monograph published with Radius Books, following Dicotyledon and the long-term project Oceanscapes-One View-Ten Years. Pieces from that series and other site-specific artworks are in the collections of corporate institutions, private collectors and museums, including the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Yale University Art Gallery, Conneticut; the George Eastman House, Rochester; New Britain Museum of American Art; Hamburger Kunsthalle; and the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison.

About this title

Review

Once in a while, we stumble upon a photo or series that leaves us in a state of wonder. German-born photographer Renate Aller's new book Ocean - Desert (Radius Books) does just that. Though her subject matter is hardly novel, the vantage point through which she photographs these landscapes captures them in a way that is simultaneously spectacular and calming. Aller is internationationally known for her ocean photography but has also begun to photograph deserts in recent years, and most of the book's spreads feature both terrains. She captures the similarities and contrasts between the two, and the human elements she occasionally adds reveal our relationships with these formidable landscapes.--The Editors "New Republic "

For her essay in the monograph Ocean/Desert, a premiere of photographer Renate Aller's latest body of work published by the ever-impeccable Radius Books. It's a lovely and infromative essay, which, mercifully, doesn't presume to tell the reader what to think, while at the same time affording intellectual access to Aller's pairing of ocean wtih desert. The two are not readily similar, on a human scale at least, unless we shift to the geological perspective of time and consider the fact that much of our earth has been covered by the sea, and plenty of the fossils of some of the earliest seashells are found in the desert. As Aller states, "you can measure the existence of the ocean in the desert."--Kathryn M. Davis "THE Magazine "

Edition details

• Publisher: Radius Books
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934435813
• ISBN 13: 9781934435816
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 136