Nicolas Faure's new book Autoland - Pictures from Switzerland portrays the provocative intersections between nature and the modern industrial world, between ordered civilization and its chaotic outskirts, between safety and danger. These places are frequently divided by the most insignificant borders -- a chainlink fence, a concrete shoulder, a deep ditch, but they delineate the worlds of expediency and transience with stationary constancy. Faure's pictures offer us a look at the connective tissue between human habitat and ...
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Nicolas Faure's new book Autoland - Pictures from Switzerland portrays the provocative intersections between nature and the modern industrial world, between ordered civilization and its chaotic outskirts, between safety and danger. These places are frequently divided by the most insignificant borders -- a chainlink fence, a concrete shoulder, a deep ditch, but they delineate the worlds of expediency and transience with stationary constancy. Faure's pictures offer us a look at the connective tissue between human habitat and the natural world. Overpasses, underpasses, bridges and expressways are, literally, transitory zones we don't experience unless we are whizzing past in a car. Faure captures the ambivalent beauty of these places one can rarely stop to consider -- they are commonplace in their function but astounding in their visual dynamism. In some images, the grand, sculptural mechanism of mass transportation is brought back to scale by a single-seat utility tractor parked at its base or a child on a tricycle cruising along a pedestrian overpass. In others, the roadway invades an otherwise bucolic landscape, then discloses the inelegant backside of a highly manicured town. Roadways here are the general and hideous but also the means by which we can experience our world anew.
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