«Most people spend the majority of their lives in built environments», says photographer Sanwal Deen to introduce his series called «Monuments». These photographs are in fact a testimony of the life which swarms inside the walls, inside the cities. The central concept is that each window offers a glimpse into a person’s story or a building’s soul.
Thanks to many photographs and a technique that requires a lot of patience, the Seattle-based artist chose to explore the daily human life: our relationship to the intimate, to vast dimensions, to our home and our workplaces with a considerable precision. «I wanted to push myself with this series. Each photograph is made up of anywhere between 400-800 individual images that I shot using a telephoto lens during different times of the day, then stitched together in photoshop to create the whole. This gives me a lot more detail than otherwise possible; I can print these images at an insanely large scale. Of course, handling these files is a pain to deal with, he explains. For example, if you look at the high-resolution image of the Polyclinic [second picture], you can see a woman looking out the window, sitting by herself apparently waiting for a doctor. An expression of concern washes over her face as she waits for the doctor to tell her how her life will play out.»
To try to look beyond the buildings and follow this impressive series, check out the photographer’s work on his website.
