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The work of the Dutch
artist Martin Effert presents us with landscape images
in an immediate and direct way. Within his
photographic works, we are presented with images that
are clearly landscapes: pieces of land largely
occupied by vegetation.
Martin Effert doesn't construct his discourse through
attempting to find a new craft but uses an established
one, the craft of photography. Instead his practice of
creating unique images that demand consideration is
based in the exploitation of this established craft
and the careful selection of landscapes to show.
He selects tracts of land that are immediately
identifiable as familiar urban or interurban tracts of
land, many of which have a distinctively Dutch flavour
to them: disheveled nature park, undeveloped urban
'wastelands' in the process of partial reversion to a
vegetated state, a drainage ditch below a road,
plant-strewn patches between highway pylons. There are
few images that do not show, or somehow suggest, a
human geography. Whether this is an intentional device
or merely reflective of the environment in which he
lives and works is uncertain.
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