After my environment tutorial I began exploring more specific photographs related with my chosen theme of deforestation and thought by researching these photographers would help decide what route I was taking my theme upon.
I began researching the work of Edgar Martins. I chose to focus on his work, because of his epic landscapes that he photographs. His work is very formal and very minimal something that I admire. I feel he relates to my work very well since I have been focusing on the land. Much of his work is small apertures and long exposures, a method that I would like to try.
When exploring his work I mainly focused on `the diminishing present`. This urbanism is portrayed as a movement of isolation. The work calls attention reflecting on flow and the use of space. The setting appears as spatial and temporal dislocation. He operates within a landscape of uncertainly, within a culture, transition and opposition. Spaces are primed with a sense of purpose, yet they are seen as magical, fragmented and dispersed. When observing the delicate weight of these landscapes, human perception seems to enter a different register. It's as if everything expresses possibility, as if space and time are about to simmer and disperse. 
`The diminishing present` is a journey of recognition. The city and space are changing. Because of this, one needs to find a new critical language that supports it, and a new system of knowledge from which to get our vocabulary of life.
In this work there is a permanent ambivalence between poetic-failure and the promise of success. The photographer reflects upon modern city's in repeated development, and the spectacular changes in human perception and representational practices that it induces. Ina study that goes beyond pure formal investigation, desperate elements catalyse and reunite new experiences of the contemporary city.
Darren Almonds
Darren almonds work focuses on the subject matter of a recurring theme of time, memory, human labour and exploitation in various geographical parts of the world.
Almond is a traveller, and since the beginning of his career in the mid 1990`s he has experimented with films, video-instillations and photography in remote regions. He has also has made kinetic sculptures, the best known of which are made with digital clock mechanisms.
In his solo exhibition at Parasol, he shows two films shot separately in china and Indonesia. The show shows a series of photographs taken in Norilsk and Monchegorsk, Siberia.
In this full moon series, Almond photographs landscapes at night using moonlight and an extremely long exposure. Due to exposure times, running water becomes fog, whilst fog also connotes over exposure.
The photograph, Night and fog is based upon one of the biggest nickel mines in the world. There's more acid rain in his town. The trees suffer something similar to frostbite. You get these forests of dead, burnt trees in a landscape that’s never dry so its incongruous.
Almonds enormous series of black and white photographs show blackened trees on the Siberian tundra outside of Norilsk. The town was the site of the worlds largest nickel mine. After spewing out sulphur, unchecked trees in the area have effectively been chemically burnt, and now resemble sad sticks of charcoal poked in the snow.
When looking at this image you notice forests of dead, burnt trees on a landscape that’s never dry. Almond spent months at a time in the town, contemplating the human and environmental loss and enduing temperatures of minus 45F. At times, he says the liquid in his eyes froze.
Through out almonds work he refers back to the issue of the horrific information we are given about the destruction of the planet. The political and social issues are there in his work because they are current. His work shows an emotional landscape that surrounds viewers when observing.
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