It has a sense of finality - and an insistent, pulsating, presence. Approach closer and a journey begins, the eye wandering through desolate valleys and angry skies. Closer still and sharp, tangible details emerge: the seams of copper, iron and sulphur on distant volcanoes, individual flamingos in salt lakes five kilometers away. The monumental prints in Alexander Lindsay’s ALTITUDE series are the
latest expressions of his life’s journey as photographer, filmmaker and artist. His past work (including award-winning films) has ranged across ancient cycles of life and death, epic battlefields and vast expanses of ocean. Up close, Lindsay’s imagery has been consistently compelling. Afghan Mujahidin combat footage of outstanding rawness and power; aerial scenes of Russian Special Forces wreaking vengeance in the Panshir Valley; the heaving seas captured from a 12th century Scottish long-ship; and the looming hulk of the Titanic, four kilometres miles deep in the North Atlantic darkness. Diverse subjects perhaps, but for Lindsay they share a common link: ‘My fascination lies in peering over the edges of the unknown… Certainly the combat situations, looking at and even entering the wreck of the Titanic and travelling and capturing these extraordinary regions of the world, all induce in me an identical sensation that I find incredibly hard to describe in words.’
That fugitive sensation is powerfully articulated in Lindsay’s new work. ALTITUDE comprises a series of gigantic photographic images of South American landscapes, from the remote, high altitude deserts of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, to the bleak desolation of the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn in the extreme south. As Lindsay puts it, ‘The detail and scale of the photography is simply monumental. Scale is important to me, in the subject and in the artworks.’
The process of making these images is not straightforward. First, ship a truck and enduro motorcycle, together with one ton of camera, computer, expedition and survival equipment to Valparaiso, Chile. Next, travel nearly 20,000 miles overland in six months, much of it through the thin air of the Atacama desert with its relentless winds and nighttime -20°c temperatures. Along the way endure the region’s biggest snowfall since 1947, trapped for eight days in a simple stone refugio, or a week shooting through blizzards from the back of a fishing boat off Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego. Oh, and don’t forget to make the pictures themselves. Lindsay again: ‘The regions ALTITUDE took me to necessitated a ‘survival’ attitude simply by being there… The imaging process is so laboured and intricate that I’m working on gut instinct and am really only seeing what I framed, and why, months later as the completed work emerges from the printer.’
ALTITUDE is a compelling new series and Lindsay has opened up an exciting new chapter in the convergence of art and eye-popping digital technologies. Beyond the documentary genius of Salgado and the hypnotic appeal of Andreas Gursky, Lindsay’s work elicits a new and different response: a sensory immersion, a fresh and vicarious thrill that fuses classical landscape depiction with the best of epic cinematic composition.
