Hannah Karsen’s "Although I Have Never Been Here Before And Know Nothing About This Place" is a series of topographical photographs that transform man-made trails and pathways into an open-ended study of form and space. This concise grouping of seven images have no narrative arc, no beginning or end, and instead function as a quiet meditation on Karsen’s brief and fleeting encounters with the land.
Karsen’s photographs are remarkably delicate. The paths that extend through each image hang like penciled lines, or as Karsen describes, “as gold necklace, as abstract marker of dimension, as a palpable sense of a certain softness…as a trace that becomes faint.” It’s easy to loose one’s self when viewing Karsen’s work: her light observations allow the viewer to fall into a spaced-out, trance-like state. Despite their consistent cyan cast, the experience of looking at these images is surprisingly euphoric.
The location of this series is unimportant. While they are all photographed in a specific, concentrated space, their exact location and geography has no bearing on the experience of viewing them. “I use my photographs,” writes Karsen “to capture immediate experiences of insignificant fleeting moments. My photographs become evidence of time and light, relationships to a physical environment.”
Bio: Hannah Karsen is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography and video. Current bodies of her work address perception of ordinary situations by focusing on fragile, fleeting moments on the periphery of her everyday experiences.