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Publisher Note

Steve Harries explores the force and fragility of our environment. In his book Octopus, he turns his attention more specifically to mountain landscapes and their glaciers.
Over the last ten years, Harries has produced a corpus of photographs of mountains around the world, inspired in particular by the geological processes behind their formation and their morphological features. His experience with still life photography has also inspired him to hone in on certain geological details. Photographed over a decade and in multiple locations spanning Austria, Italy, Canada and Chile, Harries initially sought to capture an instinctual visual response to our natural surroundings; one of respect, appreciation and admiration. Yet on reading the poem ‘An Octopus’ by Marianne Moore (1924), Harries describes how his pictures took on a new meaning. Hence the reference to the octopus (Octopus) of the English poet who writes: “Relentless accuracy is the nature of this octopus with its capacity for fact. Creeping slowly as with meditated stealth, its arms seeming to approach from all directions…”
In 1924 Moore too observed a sense of constant change; the movement of texture and form through light and time. Her words now have a new resonance with the glacier’s forced fragility in our modern times.

In this book Steve Harries has therefore put together a more freely composed sequence, emulating Moore’s approach by overlaying images created in differing ways and instilling a bold formal dialogue that encourages a new appreciation of mountain landscapes.

“As a photographer, the mountains arouse great curiosity and inspiration. The texture, formation and silhouette, and also their age and history. For the past 10 years I have been recording a portfolio based on shape and geology around the world. Subjects who have been studied in isolation and often clash.
But sometimes it is as if they were talking to each other with quiet synergy ".
- Steve Harries

Publisher
Release Place Paris, France
Edition 1st edition
Release Date 2022
Credits
Writer: Marianne Moore
Artist: Steve Harries
Identifiers
ISBN-13: 978-2-492175-25-1
Work  
Topics Environment, Glaciers, Mountain Landscapes
Language English
Format Softcover
Dimensions 24.0 × 32.0 cm
Pages 88