From the archive
WHERE THE OCEAN MEETS THE SKY

Scanned in some older work from my Scotland Portfolio. The photographs where created at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s. On film, some with the Nikon, some with the Mamiya RB67. Film used was Ilford XP2. And the enlargments were done in my own darkroom on Ilford Galerie. 

 © Chris Dematté.Fine Art Photography _ www.chrisdematte.com

A WALK IN THE PARK

Vienna, Schoenbrunn Palace Park

Into the Maze

Shelter

Growing

REDISCOVERED II

Finally it was snowing...

Landscape, Untitled #4 

Landscape (detail), Untitled #5 

Landscape, Untitled #6

REDISCOVERED

On the first day of the new year I somehow rediscovered how much fun landscape photography could be...

Landscape, Untitled #1

Landscape, Untitled #2

Landscape, Untitled #3

Work in Progress

PROJECT "FRONTLINE"

A few weeks ago I started with my new project called "Frontline". The background of this project is the WW2 Battle of Moscow, which took place  (according to official history) from Sept. 30, 1941 to April 2, 1942. Today it is seen as the largest battle between two armies of all time. Combining the totals for both sides, German an Soviet, approximately seven million troops were involved in some portion of this battle. Of this seven millions, 2.5 millions were killed, taken prisoners, missing or wounded bad enough to require hospitalization, 1.9 millions of them on the Soviet side. At some points the German Army reached the outskirts of Moscow but was stopped about 25 km from the Kremlin, today a car drive of about 20 minutes (if there is no traffic). The Battle of Moscow marked the first time Hitler's armies failed to triumph with their Blitzkrieg tactics and the German army never completly recovered from that defeat which is seen by many contemporary historians as the ultimate turning point of WW2.

Along the frontline of this battle there are today a lot of memorials and monuments remembering the heroic fight of the Red Army to stop the Fasiscts. With my project I want to document some of them. Seeing photography as a meaning of expression of one's feelings I am planing to "manipulate" my pictures in a way that they express the emotions I had while making the pictures. Here are first test to try out how to achieve this...

 "Alley of the Heros", Ruza

Near Ruza

Near Ruza 

Near Mozaishk

Near Mozaishk 

Monument to the "Sibirian Defenders of Moscow", Snegiri

The "Stop Line" at Snegiri

Monument to the "Defenders of Moscow's Sky" , near Moshaisk

The "Panfilov Warriors", Nelidovo

Monument to Zoya  (Zoe) Kosmodemyanskay, Dorokhovo

FENCED IN

Waiting for the appropiate weather for my next project (I would need snow, but here in Moscow no sign of it at the moment) I a playing around a little bit with some technics I am planning to use.
Night photography, available light, hand held, some texture added. Yes, my next project is more on the dark side...

NIGHT SHADOWS

"Walk-by-shootings". Shadows caused by street lights.

Random Shots
GROUNDED

Found some old MIGs in a museum yard. I particularly like the textures. Don't think they will ever fly again...

SPIRITS

From a time when nobody cared about fuel consumption, aerodynamics or pedestrian safety: A few hood ornaments from the 1930s and 1940s...

 

Meanwhile in Russia
RANDOM PORTRAIT #2

At the Red Square. January 21, 2015. 

AD ASTRA II

Space Oddity

Yuri Gagarin Monument, Moscow

Monument to the Conquest of Space, Moscow

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles

I'm feeling very still

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go

Tell my wife I love her very much "she knows"

Ground Control to Major Tom

Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you "Here Am I floating round a tin can

Far above the Moon

Planet Earth is blue

And there's nothing I can do.

[David Bowie, Space Oddity]

AD ASTRA

Moscow

Fujifilm X-T1; XF 35mm F1.4R; ISO 400; f 5,6; 1/350

Meanwhile in Russia
THE LAUGHING GOAT

Some of the picts I did for the guy with the goats...

WINTER WONDERLAND

The last days of 2014 brought temperatures here in Moscow region of around -20°C so one had a lot of opportunities of doing this winter wonderland picture. 2015 started with temperatures of +2°C so at the moment all this was melting away. But the temperature forecast for next week is -25°C so I think I will have some more changes to get such pictures... 

Meanwhile in Russia
RANDOM PORTRAIT #1

Strolling through the heavily snowed-in Russian countryside on the last day of 2014 I encountered this guy. Seeing my camera he asked me to take some pictures of his animals. He is living in a small house together with eight goats, two black pigs, some cats and a lot of rabbits (he doesn't know anymore how many of them there are). Actually his animals have more living space then he. And he cares very much for them, constantly talking about them. Using all my rudimentary knowledge of the Russian language and his of the English one we had quite a long and interesting chat. At the end he offered to pay me 20 rubles for the pictures of his goats. I will give them to him for free... ;-)

WASTELAND II

Re-edited some pictures from the Karabasch series. Somehow black & white works much better (at least for me)... 

The mining town of Karabasch, situated about 1,800 km east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains, is one of the World's most polluted locations. A copper smelting plant is situated in the town since 1910, which is emitting extremely large amounts of pollution. 

Within 100 years, the factory has the surrounding area extended burned and covered with slag. Per year of operation, it encounters more than 180 tons of gas in the atmosphere, the back falls as acid rain in the local area back to earth. For decades, the soil in and around Karabasch is contaminated by high concentrations of highly toxic metals like lead, arsenic, nickel, cobalt, cadmium, copper and zinc, some of which exceed the maximum permitted limit for the two-to 150-fold. The iron content exceeds the norm by a factor of 500. In 1996 the town was officially recognized by the Russian government as a "ecological disaster zone", the UNESCO lists Karabasch as on of the most polluted locations on earth.