Further to my earlier post about the appeal of surreal photography, today I’d like to highlight the amazing work of Robert ParkeHarrison and his poignantly beautiful series titled The Architect’s Brother.

The book of the same name comes highly recommended, and was in fact named one of the “Ten Best Photography Books of the Year” in 2000 by the New York Times. (My recently ordered copy is currently winging its way to my door – yay!)

Here’s a sample image to whet your appetite:

Cloud Burst

The book provides the following background:

Robert ParkeHarrison creates constructed photographs which tell stories of loss, struggle, and personal exploration within landscapes scarred by technology and over-use. He attempts to metaphorically and poetically link his laborious actions, idiosyncratic rituals and strangely crude machines into tales about our modern experience.
The mythic world he creates mirrors our world, where nature is domesticated and controlled. The scenes display futile attempts to save or rejuvenate nature. His ‘everyman’ character patches holes in the sky, creates rain machines, chases storms to create electricity, communicates with the earth to learn its needs. Within these scenes, he creates less refined, less scientific, more ritualistic and poetic possibilities to work with nature rather than destroying it.
The nature of his images and the process of their construction are interdisciplinary, embodying aspects of theater, sculpture, and painting, photography and performance. None of the images are real in the factual sense, but they are treated as precious talismans of a lost moment, a documented super-reality, whose message, like that of a myth, transcends the small realities of the day to day world.

Further to my earlier post highlighting the impressive work of wilderness photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis, Robert’s work is another example of a photographer’s keen efforts to help conserve the environment through his imagery.

And now here are some more of Robert’s imaginative photographs for your viewing pleasure:

Windwriting

The Visitation

The Passage

Suspension

Promisedland

Pollination

Mending the Earth

Forestbed

Edison’s Light

Da Vinci’s Wings

Cloud Cleaner

Flying Lesson

The Sower

Some of these photographs remind me of those made by the Polish photographer, Berenika – if the above images float your boat, be sure to check out Berenika’s work too!