Landscape nominee

What do we do if a theory of landscape necessitates a theory of everything? Accumulating data breeds new specialties, but adds to the fragmentation — while one's relationship with the land is something inherently personal. Landscape is something walked — a sense of intimacy mixed up with logistics. In the end, what we carry out is perhaps gratitude, and a sense of non-human.

“This, Promised” was shot in the Norwegian arctic over a period of complete seasonal change from the end of the polar day to the beginning of polar night. It focuses on places along the edges of structured land — roads, farms, national borders, the local fishing and mining industry, archeological sites and natural preserves — and covers the municipalities of Sør-Varanger, Vadsø, Vardø, Nesseby and Båtsfjord.

Gleb Simonov is a poet and photographer, born in Russia in 1986 and currently based in New York.

He is an author of two books of poems: “Выбранной ветки”, published by ARGO-RISK in 2017, and “Glossary for a Game in Hell”, a hand-printed book made in collaboration with artist Vika Adutova. His literary work has been long-listed at the international Debut Prize (2010, 2012) and appeared in many Russian poetry magazines, such as Воздух, Лиterraтура, Polutona and others.

In photography, Gleb works primarily with non-urban landscapes. His work has been featured in “Observations in the Ordinary” collection by Subjectively Objective, and several photography magazines, such as Float, PHROOM, Phases, Analog magazine and others.