Falling

Neeta Madahar's film falling questions our everyday contact with the natural world unsettling the distinction between the orchestrated and the natural.

 

Falling depicts a succession of sycamore seeds as they tumble slowly toward the viewer in a strangely dramatic moment, unsettling any clear distinction between the orchestrated and the natural. Whilst the work embodies a direct observation of and intimate, everyday contact with the natural world it also suggests a constructed rather than spontaneous heart to those intimate moments of wonder.

Working from her former residence in Massachusetts, Madahar spent eighteen months patiently photographing the birds and squirrels that gathered at her balcony to create the Sustenance series.  The series chronicles fluctuating moments in time, capturing changing seasons as well as daily domestic activities.

In both works, Madahar represents the physical world in unusual ways enabling the viewer to immerse themselves in stillness and intimate details. Ordinary scenes are exposed in crystalline detail, albeit in a strangely altered, exaggerated form.

The film matches something childlike to a knowing sophistication that has strong echoes of Surrealism, and hints at something darker, more threatening, around and above us.

During 2004, Neeta Madahar was selected for the Rencontres d'Arles Photography Festival, curated by Martin Parr.