Formist | Sam Doctor: Temporal Plains

One of the latest releases from Formist Editions is a research-driven photobook exploring lost and traumatised places. The 96-page paperback publication, Temporal Terrains, contemplates photographer, Sam Doctor’s, work over the last decade, offering an opportunity to follow the threads that run through different photographic series. Sam’s photographic practice ruminates on humanity’s fragile relationship with the environment by researching specific instances of catastrophe, desecrated landscapes, and the effects of technology and industry.

Temporal Plains explores the traces and permutations of environmental decline, playing out on contested sites from Vietnam to Japan, from Thailand to Australia. The included photographs, most of which have not been exhibited before, accumulate into an immersive but damning narrative, capturing the incidental quality of the ongoing trauma of colonialism and the manipulation of the natural world. The sites harbour multiple temporalities: once privileged sites of capitalist extractivism and power generation, valued and vaunted by nation states and civic authorities, are now abandoned, abject, and trivialised locales mined for the tourist dollar.

The photographer’s approach evokes a disquieting contrast between man-made ruinations and the visual beauty of the photographs themselves. This is presented in the stunning landscapes of the Kawah Ijen sulphur mine in East Java, Indonesia, the abandoned Mary Kathleen uranium line near Mount Isa in Queensland, Australia, and the Hang Dong Quarry near Chiang Mai, Thailand. This paradox emerges again within the exclusion zone of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

Temporal Terrains documents Sam’s explorations into these desecrated landscapes. The large format publication offers a visual essay of the artist’s investigation, as well as an enlightening essay by Associate Professor Dr Jacqueline Miller.

Formist is a publisher, type foundry, and design studio, founded and run by Mark Gowing. Formist Editions is the publishing arm committed to creating high quality books, prints and artworks for lovers of art and design. Formist books are tactile and beautiful, while remaining relevant and informative, as they meticulously produce all aspects of the project, from concept through editorial and design, to fabrication, marketing, and distribution.

Purchase your copy here.

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