Nature: Honorable Mention 2018 (professional)
ENTRY DESCRIPTION
The classical Chinese landscape painting has been an important source of inspiration in my photography for more than 20 years.
My work consists in pushing the boundaries of photography to get as close as possible to the expression of simplicity using emptiness as a support to emphasize the subjects.
Many days a year, the Mountain is shrouded by fog and clouds that have been depicted in the classical Chinese painting by generations of artists. These conditions offer me a perfect way to blur the distinction between photography and painting.
AUTHOR
Olivier Robert is a professional photographer and landscape architect sharing his life between Europe and Japan. Initiated very early into the world of photography and dark room, he got his first camera at the age of 15. At that time, he also discovered Asia. This intense experience has drastically influenced his way of life and his vision of the world. From then on, photography and Asian philosophy will be closely linked.
In 1994, he graduated from the Institute of Landscape Architecture in Belgium and left his native country for Switzerland. As he arrived in the Lake Geneva region in 1995, he started a photographic work about the lake. After some years, this work has become a personal project based on a deep fascination of the photographer for this lake. This project is still continuing 20 years after and has pushed him into visiting many other lakes in the world. Since 2004, he has devoted his work almost exclusively to landscapes and waterscapes using mainly long exposures.
For his continuous projects as well as family reasons, he often gets thoroughly across Japan looking for specific landmarks which convey timelessness, simplicity and sometimes mystery.
This approach has led him to the most remote places of the archipelago, through mountains, temples and shrines about which he has also carried out a photographic project on Buddhist statuary and sacred art for years.
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