UNGLORY

SERIES PUBLISHED IN THE LIFE FRAME COLLECTION

“We witness here an unexpected scene – wild animals out of the wild, grazing outside an industrial complex in South Africa. Without a human in sight, it brings to mind ideas of the pressure we put on the land with our relentless momentum of industrialization, and of the legacy we leave on the natural world we share with so much other life. These are themes Martina eloquently explores in her series statement, but the image stands up on its own – surprising, intriguing and oddly beautiful.”

– Life Framer

SERIES STATEMENT

By documenting the uncanny presence of wild animals in an industrial complex in South Africa we observe one of many curious examples where man's relationship with nature's oldest continent has changed as a result of industrialization processes.

The absence of human figures in these photos may, however, suggests a dystopian mirrored scenario: one in which the animals are not being studied by a team of researchers as endangered, as it actually happens in the present, but here they claim possession of our industrial archeologies. This fauna exemplars are feeding themselves on the detritus of our failures as a society who have caused the depletion of the original and unique ”territorial glory."

A landscape that describes a détournement process shows us the contradictions of the capitalist model in the Cape Town Provinces.

Abundant industrial architecture sits in front of an extravagant wild sight consisting in containers, old ships from pirates used by neighboring film studios, a bleached landscape, zebras, eland and springboks that inhabit the garden particle accelerator.

↓ LIFE FRAME AWARDED photo by judge and Tate Modern Curator Emma Lewis