Joseph Altendahl is a photographer from the USA who creates in both analog monochrome and digital color.
He approaches his work with surgical precision. The portfolio is meticulously framed and impeccably composed and accompanied by a location and precise, down-to-the-second time of every picture taken. Altendahl plays off of the symmetry of the city, accentuating it with creative, yet precise, shadowplay. This proportionate minimalism serves as an antidote to the oversaturated and chaotic surroundings of cities.
Geometry, utterly objective in its nature, serves the photographer in creating subjective slices of reality. Complete solitude within the frames intensifies the presence of the artist, underlining his individual experience of taking the photograph. At the same time, Altendahl avoids the impression of alienation or coldness. His frames are like a deep breath in the middle of a busy day.
In this series, Altendahl trades the vivid, liminal grit of colorful, moody photography for the stark contrast between light and shadow that inhabits black-and-white imagery. His conceptual work revolves around themes such as emptiness, quietude, and lonesomeness, beautifully expressed through carefully framed captures of nature or urban details and striking shadowplay.
The geometry of space that he often uses to play with angles and proportions is reminiscent of the sacred geometry of the universe. This intentionally hints at the ambivalence predominant in all aspects of reality as we know it and the symmetry that so finely complements it. Altendahl’s focus falls, more often than not, on the idea that it is precisely from this duality that the most can be extracted.
This series is highly descriptive of his entire monochrome portfolio, which showcases an intentional removal of distractions to focus attention on the overlooked. He says, “This set inverts the vibrant ideal of the West, opting instead for the tension found in its unseen corners.”
Artist’s Note:
“Everyone goes West for the light, the ocean, and the trees, but I found myself looking almost exclusively at the shadows.
We are taught to experience the Pacific Coast in a very specific way: the relentless blue of the water, the deep greens of the evergreens, the scorched whites and browns of the high desert. It is a landscape defined by vibrance. I went on this trip fully expecting to consume that ideal, but I became obsessed with something not nearly as obvious.
I began seeing the West as a series of rhythmic collisions between scorched highlights and deep shadows. I stopped looking at the horizon and started looking at how harshly the sun carves the world into bars and grids. I saw shadows stretching across a grassy hill like a massive, dark ribcage and the way light slices through slats to turn a simple wall or a concrete floor into a complex, geometric map.
These images are an exercise in subtraction. Whether it is the cold symmetry of columns casting long, jagged stripes across a silent corridor or the industrial texture of a shadow falling against cracked pavement, I began hunting for a structural noir that exists on the periphery of the tourist attraction.”
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
