Martha Beaumont – Artists Statement:
My photographs document life-size sets that are assembled and painted in the studio for the sole purpose of the final photographic image. They are entirely staged – highly idealised and symmetrically composed – and by using as combination of stylised and naturalistic painting within the sets, they impose a sense of the theatrical on the landscape of the American South West.
This body of work, A Place Out West celebrates the romance of the West Texas outpost, Marfa. I was particularly struck by the clash of minimalist concrete land art and policemen wearing Stetsons and cowboy boots in the year 2013. It seemed like a place of the imagination, and a perfect starting point for a series of photographs that play with the boundaries of reality and fiction.
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