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BY-NC-ND 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access October 2, 2019

Exploring, Photographing and Vacationing in J. G. Ballard’s Airport Landscape

  • Giorgios Crouch EMAIL logo
From the journal Open Cultural Studies

Abstract

Landscape and architecture has played a major role in J. G. Ballard's writing, I have in particular been fascinated with the use of airports in his work. When attempting to hunt down and photograph J. G. Ballard's airport landscape police and security would disrupt my ability to take photographs meaning initial plans would be altered and I would turn my focus to the peripheries, spending time cut off from the infrastructure, dwelling in abandoned waste land and forgotten patches of wilderness. Inadvertently I would replay the roles of certain characters from Ballard's work, becoming marooned and learning to adapt to the landscape. Photographing these places would yield unusual results, images resembling a science fiction landscape, turning the realist properties of photography on its head. I would discover that the extreme nature of the airport landscape influences those who experience it, so when Ballard's work portrays the modern landscape he is also revealing the unseen psychology of the humans inhabiting it.

Works Cited

Ballard, J. G. Crash. Jonathan Cape, 2012, LondonSearch in Google Scholar

Ballard, J. G. “Ultimate Departure Lounge”. Airport, Photographers Gallery Institute, 1997, London Obrist, Hans-Ulrich. Becks Future Exhibition Catalogue, 2003, LondonSearch in Google Scholar

Ballard, J. G. Concrete Island. Jonathan Cape, 1974, LondonSearch in Google Scholar

Ballard, J. G. The Drowned World. Berkley Books, 1962Search in Google Scholar

Cronenberg, David. Crash. Alliance Communications, 1996Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2018-05-26
Accepted: 2019-04-08
Published Online: 2019-10-02
Published in Print: 2019-01-01

© 2019 Giorgios Crouch, published by De Gruyter

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

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