I’m not sure if my memory servers me properly – it often doesn’t – but I think this is the first time I’ve mentioned a landscape photographer here; not that I thought it due time or anything like that, but I’m not able to pass Michael Lundgren‘s Transfiguration series (out by Radius books) w/o noting it.

At their best, and there are some doozies here, the photographs from this series take on a mythical feel, like peering into some archaic scene from a land far off where things are as simple as good and evil and where beings only stoners and/or fantasy nerds could think up live and breath, love and quarrel…  That may seem tongue and cheek, but it’s not meant to be, not at all.  Think, when was the last time you saw landscape photography that worked in the traditional vernacular (large format black and white), but which offered something completely different in terms of emotion than the white aspens in a grove?

Well, I think this is it.  Lot of mystery here, a lot.  Thanks for it, Michael.

photo: from Transfiguration series, © Michael Lundgren.

photo: from Transfiguration series, © Michael Lundgren.

photo: from Transfiguration series, © Michael Lundgren.

(That last one in particular really rattles my brain around, makes me think of something John Divola might see…)