Edgar Martins: Topologies

With artful composition and controlled framing—but no digital manipulation—Edgar Martins creates sublimely beautiful views of often unbeautiful sites. Minimalist nighttime beaches, forests ravaged by fires and Iceland's stark terrain have all served as subjects for his large-scale color photographs. He also explores the unexpected impact of Modernism on the landscape, including startlingly graphic airport runways and colorful highway barriers that, at first glance, read like abstract murals. Certain themes recur throughout Martins' work. A sense of place and alienation from it. A sense of mystery-vividly embodied in scenes such as a woman with a bouquet of balloons on a deserted shore. And a sense that something unsettling has just happened or is about to happen—a fire, an accident, a close encounter with some unspecified danger. As John Beardsley notes, "Some images are what we habitually expect photography to be—evidence of the world as we think we know it—while others obscure their subjects through an illusionism that borders on magic."