Minescape is a distressing work of landscape photography. Visually, the book takes a triangular structure that repeats itself throughout the pages: a landscape, a landmine, a prosthesis. The battlefield landscapes are photographed at dawn, romantic and vast, with fairy-tale colors. All that we are told is the location. They contrast with the coldness of the landmines and prostheses, shot like still lifes against a white background, accompanied by the chilling details of their designer, cost and use.
It is tempting to compare these figures: a landmine may cost a few dollars while a prosthesis can cost into the thousands. There’s a hint of cynicism in the final pages of the book, which lists the signatories and non-signatories of the Ottawa Mine ban Treaty. Here Brett Van Ort passes from the political to the sublime, denouncing the invalidity of international treaties, and highlighting the inalienable aspect of nature.
The landscapes are suffused with an ambiguously gentle pink that make the spaces as soothing as they are disturbing. Although the photographer’s aesthetic approach remains relatively straightforward, it is precisely in this conflicting relationship between the temporality of the planet Earth and the time span of an individual human life that Brett Van Ort’s originality lies.
Laurence Cornet
Brett Van Ort: Minescape
Daylight Books
72 pages
34,95 $
March 2013
TED Books is releasing a companion ebook entitled Minescape: Waging War Against Land Mines
