APE#033 The hill that wasn’t by Stefan Vanthuyne
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Published by Art Paper Editions (2013) The artist’s book documents a small hill, a pile of dirt on a farmer’s land, that Stefan Vanthuyne had driven past throughout different seasons of a year. One Sunday morning, while in a sentimental mood, he didn’t simply drive by it - he stopped, walked onto the land, approached it and then photographed it. Two years later Vanthuyne read a thirty year old essay by Japanese photographer Yutaka Takanashi, where he discussed a haiku by the poet Matsuo Basho, using it as a metaphor for landscape photography. ‘What is up to the photographer to do with the “landscape”‘, Takanashi wrote, ‘is to encounter it, destroy it, rebuild it, and then release it.’ Inspired by Basho’s haiku and Takanashi’s interpretation, he turned photographs into this book, and by doing so he destroyed it, rebuilt it and released it. £22.00
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