THE WORLD AROUND US by Arjen Schmitz

My autonomous work in photography highlights the development and change in space in the broadest sense of the word. This interest originates from my fascination with metropolitan architecture, landscape and the human being moving within and includes a feeling of desolation left behind.
Space is in perpetual motion. Where tradition and development meet, often arises a discrepancy. Enforced by the progressing economic developments, old and new sometimes hardly intertwine; they will deviate and ultimately new will prevail, mostly without dialogue or compromise.
In my work, I focus on project development, architecture and landscape that come into being through economic growth, and political decisions that manifest themselves on a megalomaniac scale, because of which attention for living and working comfort – including the housing environment - is reduced to a minimum. The space and the landscape are filled in with almost anonymous mass architecture as a reflection of wealth and development even when it is empty
All my photographs are made with an analogue 8x10 inch camera. Thus, I force myself to be contemplative; to observe and to study in what way the filled space presents itself and forces itself upon me. This work has been photographed in monotonous reserved light.