Equivalence, 2009
38″ x 48″, archival inkjet print

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Three Moments, 2009
38″ x 48″, archival inkjet print

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Senescence, 2010
80″ x 32.75″, archival inkjet print

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The Dissappearance, 2006
20″ x 18″, archival inkjet print

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Inversion, 2009
80″ x 32.75″, archival inkjet print

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Dust to Dust, 2010
80″ x 32.75″, archival inkjet print

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Abandoned Crates, 2007
48″x 40″, archival inkjet print

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Rotation, 2010
(16) 11″ x 17″, archival inkjet print

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Exploring themes of time, struggle, failure, death, illusion, and disillusionment, CHRIS ENGMAN inserts labor-intensive, man-made alterations into landscapes and documents the results. On the first glance you just see subjects surrounded by nature, to discover later on that not everything in the picture is supposed to be there or in that exact way. For example Three Moments, a picture that exists of three photographs taken on different dates but at the same place. The resulting image confuses fact with fiction.

My photographs are documentations of sculptures and installations but they are also records of actions and elaborate processes. Days are spent, sometimes with a crew but more often in solitude, silently driving, carrying supplies, erecting structures and sets, and studying the slow progress of the sun overhead and its all-powerful, comfort-giving and –taking effects. Created in close collaboration with the movements of the sun, precisely observed, I see my photographs as acts of reverence and participation in a deep, reassuring natural order outside of and much larger than myself.

CHRIS ENGMAN was born in 1978 and is leaving in Seattle. He studied at the University of Washington and completed his BFA in 2003. In 2004 he received the Artist Trust Fellowship. He has received the GAP Award (Grants for Artists) three times (2004, 2007 and 2010) and was shortlisted at the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival in 2009. Since then he has been featured in FOAM Magazine and has exhibited with the magazine in Arles, France in 2011.

Additionally there is a great interview of CHRIS ENGMAN by MARC FEUSTEL over at eye curious