Untitled (Escalades)

Through the windscreen of an immaculately upholstered van we look over an arid, flat panorama of an isolated town in the American West. Its towering perspective gives us the sense of discovery, as of a modern frontiersman surveying a new land unfolding beneath him. The scene thus invites immediate questioning: who has driven this pristine vehicle deep into the middle of the desert, and why? Despite naturalistic appearances, these hints at narrative are expertly engineered by Luis Gispert. We are not looking at one photograph but two – a traditional landscape shot overlaid with the vehicle’s interior. While travelling in search of material for a new series of landscapes, Gispert realised that ‘the clichéd ubiquitous landscape photograph bored me to tears’; he wanted instead ‘to frame the landscapes in a context that interested me.’ He chose the surreal world of customised cars: glamorous, garish, and obsessed with branding, they offer a striking contrast to the silent expanses of landscape seen through their windows. Gispert’s juxtapositions hold a surreal, cinematic power in themselves, but they also ironise the landscape photography tradition and its implications of timelessness and uncontaminated authenticity. The conspicuous kitsch of Gispert’s frame draws attention to the framing inherent within every image, the picture’s fictionality a reminder that no photograph is a fact.