Far too close

Far Too Close is a visual meditation on distance, both physical and emotional, of closeness to a subject and remoteness from a place. Applying a dark mesmerizing aesthetic which conveys in her images a heightened presence as real as it is poetic, Martina Hoogland Ivanow interweaves family portraits and interiors of home with landscapes of some of the most remote and far flung locations at the very ends of the Earth. Over seven years she travelled to Siberia, Sakhalin Island north of Japan, Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of Argentina, and the Kola Peninsula in Russian Lapland. Each of these places has its own dark history and has been the focus of dispute and discontent. Combined with photographs of her own community, a literary tale emerges which shifts from disturbing to familiar and is about the very nature of photography, its capacity to relate history and emotion from afar and nearby.