Lili Almog - Down to Earth

Almog has worked primarily through photography in environmental portraiture, the experimental direction of Down to Earth present new views of engagement with landscape as it integrates various forms of land use; its leisure activities and suburban life. 

"My intrigue with traces of human activity led me to explore 'America’s Playgrounds' and I became obsessed with the shapes and forms of fields; golf courses, baseball fields, oil fields, air plane ‘graveyards’…all manner of spaces, some organized, some less so. The enormity and complexity of the sights necessitated that I investigate the selected locations through satellite maps, whose inherent abstraction presented a paradoxically accessible method of aesthetic entry."

 Almog believes that the process of cultural mapping by itself draws attention to the existence and importance of human obsessive possessiveness and their behavior, linking the invisible borders of culture and art.  As she worked on this series, she was constantly reminded of the magnitude of what she was taking in.

Working virtually in cyberspace, Almog created an intimacy between herself and her subjects by drawing upon the photographs.  As vast spans of landscape changed into mapping forms, the fields become remarkably simple. The map of a cultural landscape emerged.