My practice is based on an obsessive preoccupation with home. As a result of this obsession and despite my ambivalence, whenever I travelled, I found myself taking pictures of landscapes. These photographs were taken out of a purely personal need and desire to ‘take’ a piece of that land or place with me. As the photographs were initially taken with no conceptual agenda, I felt the very loaded history of the photographic genre of landscape impeded me from finding a use or purpose for the resulting images. I therefore found myself with rolls of film I was utterly disappointed with; the negatives sat and accumulated for years in boxes, neglected of any artistic function.

I have always found limitations inspiring and so what was initially a cause of frustration and disappointment, led to the idea of merging different places of personal meaning to create idealised and utopian landscapes, of giving meaning and function to these seemingly defunct negatives. As a result, photographs taken over several years in my country of birth (Israel), where I was raised (Venezuela), across the UK (where I currently live) and the US (where my sister resides) have formed the basis of this ongoing project.

The act of physically merging landscapes from different parts of the world refers to the transitional aspect of our contemporary world in a metaphorical way. Following on from my previous work, Constructed Landscapes is interested in creating a space that defies specificity, refers to the transient and to the blurring of space, memory and time.

Dafna Talmor