CHRISTOPHER KÖLLER

ISBN: 978-0-9579553-9-4

Christopher Köller’s photographs of gardens in Parádeisos don’t strive for the ‘ideal’ view, but for a view that is different, unexpectedly beautiful or jarring. The blurred edges of plants and buildings bleed into one another and generate a sense of restless movement, a feeling that we can’t quite focus on any one point – as though we were moving though the landscape of a dream.

Produced between 1997 and 2009, the scope of Parádeisos is vast, taking us from Zen gardens in Kyoto to a roadside in West Hollywood, from Marie Antoinette’s simulations of peasant life in Versailles to the grounds of the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne.

Gardens always embody a tension between order and unpredictability as planned designs are subject to the random workings of the natural world. Christopher Köller’s choice of equipment – a cheap plastic camera – doubles this. The photographer’s control of the photograph is in constant play with the unpredictable effects of the camera and its distortions. Köller delights in the camera’s ‘mistakes’: its limited focus, unexpected bursts of colour, and tendency to reveal artefacts of the negative. In Parádeisos, these camera-effects blend with the gardens, and with the tension and play that we find in the combination of careful organisation with unruly nature.

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Published by M.33, Melbourne, 2011
96 pages
295 x 255mm
With an essay by Katrina Grant, Art Historian, Melbourne

Edited by Helen Frajman
Designed By Rebecca Jeffrey

Soft Cover: $50 (+gst within Australia)

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