Saturday 10 September 2011

Postcards From The Ghosts Of 1513

The Past: Five Centuries Ago…

During one of his voyages of discovery, the Conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon, sighted a peninsula of land, initially thought to be an island. He claimed the land in the names of Ferdinand and Isabella. As it was during the Spanish Festival of Flowers, in the Spring of 1513, he named the land ‘Florida’. He had already heard tales amongst natives of Puerto Rico, of the lands of Benimy to the north, where there sprang an ancient and sacred Fountain of Life…

Juan hoped that he had finally found those mythical mystical lands.

Five Hundred Years Later: The Present…

Within a time span of months, Remy Dean was able to visit Spain and Florida, documenting that journey from the EU to the US by capturing light from two continents. The photographs were presented as paired images, each pair comprising one image made in Spain and one image made in Florida. Whilst visiting the Kennedy Space Centre, Dean was mindful of the arduous journeys undertaken by the voyagers of five centuries ago and thought of the voyages of discovery as yet unmade.

This series of 18 images was displayed as part of the NIGHT / LIGHT exhibition in the form of paired, postcard-sized pictures. They are also available in a small bound edition, part of the 'Pocket & Purse Gallery' from Questing Beast Books, which will not be reproduced after 2013.