Pause III, 2009 by Ozant Kamaci

Contender Ozant Kamaci photographs airplanes as they fly behind trees, collaging the natural and man-made objects into flat, striking images. It's the "juxtaposition of powerful machines, which are symbols of advancement and technology, against nature, which is widely accepted as precious and untouched" that interests him. But the images are also studies in composition and layering, and a slight inquiry into the ability of photography to "move the viewer to a new space," through these specific points-of-view which are repeated throughout the series Pause.

Untitled images from Concorde by Wolfgang Tillmans

I am reminded of German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans' Concorde, a document that looks at the power—and simultaneous hope and possible destruction—that comes with a machine as powerful as plane. The concorde leaves streaks in the air, zooms past farmland, rips past trees, and pulses through the sky, tiny in relation to the world, ominous nonetheless. Tillmans warns us to be weary of what awes us; the beautiful and the grotesque can be almost indistinguishable.

Ozant's own fascination with airplanes extends to several of his bodies of work, which depict people—in awe—watching planes in a field and, on the front page of his site, a plane passing behind a cow. Throughout, he insists again and again that nature and the man-made are increasingly intertwined, and that our fascination with the roar and whoosh that comes with these once-futuristic machines that we're now dependent upon is a double-edged sword, that must be continually acknowledged.

Untitled, from Pause M, by Ozant Kamaci

You can view more of Ozant's work on his website.