Giacomo Costa- Post Natural
The last post, Brighter Days Ahead, featured a painting that dealt with the anticipation of the future. The perspective of that painting had a somewhat optimistic and hopeful vision of what might be ahead. There are, of course, grimmer visions of the future out there. I was reminded of this early this morning when I came across the photos of Italian photographer/artist Giacomo Costa.
Costa uses digital manipulation and , from what I can deduce, extensive architectural research to create large scale images that portray fantastic futuristic structures and cityscapes in various stages of decay. They are very cinematic, easily fitting in any big budget sci-fi thriller, yet stand on their own as pure, thought provoking imagery. It was the cover of his book, The Chronicles of Time, shown here on the right, that caught my eye. I wasn’t aware of Costa’s work and thought this was a real building, one so fantastic and amorphous that I couldn’t believe I had never seen it before this.
It may be a grimmer future, albeit one that may be a millennium or two or more away, than we want to imagine but there is something beautiful in the recapture of the natural space by trees and oceans. Perhaps, we may not be anymore at some point but nature will prevail in some form. And that is, in some strange way, comforting, especially if you believe that we humans are not remote as a species but are entwined on a particle level with all natural life and will have some form of consciousness, even among the ruins of a human civilization.
It may not be the future we wish for but it is a future. Check out the work of Giacomo Costa at his website. It will make you think about the future and, hopefully, the present.
Redtree Times 