What do we do if a theory of landscape necessitates a theory of everything? Accumulating data breeds new specialties, but adds to the fragmentation — while one’s relationship with the land is something inherently personal. Landscape is something walked — a sense of intimacy mixed up with logistics. In the end, what we carry out is perhaps gratitude, and a sense of non-human. “This, Promised” was shot in the Norwegian arctic over a period of complete seasonal change from the end of the polar day to the beginning of polar night. It focuses on places along the edges of structured land — roads, farms, national borders, the local fishing and mining industry, archeological sites and natural preserves — and covers the municipalities of Sør-Varanger, Vadsø, Vardø, Nesseby and Båtsfjord.
Gleb Simonov is a poet and photographer, born in Russia in 1986 and currently based in New York. He is an author of two books of poems: “Выбранной ветки”, published by ARGO-RISK in 2017, and “Glossary for a Game in Hell”, a hand-printed book made in collaboration with artist Vika Adutova. His literary work has been long-listed at the international Debut Prize (2010, 2012) and appeared in many Russian poetry magazines, such as Воздух, Лиterraтура, Polutona, and others.
In photography, Gleb works primarily with non-urban landscapes. His work has been featured in “Observations in the Ordinary” collection by Subjectively Objective, and many photography magazines, such as Float, PHROOM, Phases, Analog magazine, and others. Additionally, Gleb is the founder and curator of the Knizhnica archive, an online library of late Soviet samizdat books.
