Lozenge no. 56, 2010 by David Axelbank

Landscapes, or the reinterpretation of the genre of Landscape, has been something that my aesthetic palate has begun to shift on in recent years, gathering up increasingly in an appealing force for my attention and consideration. Initially coming from a documentary background, I used to hold fast to the belief that a photograph was interesting if it had interesting people in it. Now, something has turned and I find myself more drawn to images where there is no one present, or at the most perhaps, what is present is evidence of someone once having been there.

London-born photographer David Axelbank has been quietly wrestling with something similar. Spending the beginning of his career interning at Magnum and then moving on to editorial photography, the body of work he has chosen to submit to us here is a marked departure from the faces and personalities that began his professional life. The subject matter here is landscape, but ironically Axelbank was struck by the idea to make these images after seeing a retrospective of portrait painting at the Tate in 2006. The portraitist? Hans Holbein the Younger:

Allegory of Desire, oil on oak, ca. 1533-36 by Hans Holbein the Younger

What struck Axelbank about the lozenge format that Holbein made ample use of was its proclivity to involuntarily focus your attention on its interior by manipulating your sense of framing. Axelbank was interested in what effect applying this frame would have on the traditionally horizontally-oriented genre of landscape photography. From Axelbank's statement:

There is an undeniably physical effect created when a scene is viewed through a diamond or rhombus shaped frame, which causes a heightened awareness of the act of seeing. Traditional landscape imagery, whether painting or drawing, is anchored by a horizontal baseline to frame the composition. This does not truly reflect how we see - rather it is an art historical convention. Our vertical line of sight, foveal vision, intersects with the extremities of our peripheral vision, horizontal perception, to create the lozenge shape.

It is no coincidence that the most effective compositions include strong vertical and horizontal lines - trees for example, are a hugely important component of this series. Piet Mondrian explored a very similar concept with his distillation of the lines of nature in his theory of "neo-plasticism". He aimed to create a balance between the horizontal and the vertical in a series of abstract lozenge shaped canvases - which evolved from abstraction of natural forms, most notably trees.

There is something almost primordial about this new geometry. The lozenge contradicts dominant art historical practises, yet resonates as an essential compositional form.

What I find fascinating in looking at these images serially, is how my eye, which is traditionally guided up and around the photographic narrative in a still shot, is now somehow transformed to looking into and through the picture plane, as if instead of a flat two-dimensional space, I am looking instead through a window, or maybe more precisely a refined peep-hole:

Lozenge no. 57, 2010 by David Axelbank

It's as if narrative ceases to become about scanning a scene with eyes and mind, and rather more about tunneling or boring into it for detail and meaning. It's startling to me that simply changing the shape of the frame can re-orient my sense of sight so completely, but as you move through the series, you'll doubtless find yourself faced with the same heady and disorientating sensation.

David Axelbank's entire series of Lozenge landscapes can be viewed at his website and his professional site with other bodies and genres of work can be seen here.