© Mike Reinders, Snow, from the series Never Never Land, 2006/07
© Mike Reinders, Bunker, from the series Never Never Land, 2006/07“These photographs depict fictional landscapes inhabited by human clones after a catastrophic and extinctive event. Digital manipulation is used to ‘clone’ one man from the other by merging sequential images together on top of one another. The final result is an image that explores multiple identities and time through the use of photography.Themes about identity and masculinity surround the figures in the photographs and reveal specifics about a certain type of man; one that must explore and navigate but also one that must defend. Within the narrative of the images the clones must explore and struggle against their own for survival.Historical notions of the land and exploration also play a role in the photographs. The grandness of the landscape references themes from the 19th century; the Hudson River School painters and photographers from geological surveys. Although the narrative is fictional, the photographs of these scenes show land that exists in the 21 st century, idealized but devoid of real life.”
Mike Reinders
N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 