Your name
Alexander Walmsley
Place of birth
Rochester, USA
Place where you live now
Berlin, Germany
3 words to describe you
Curious, considered, caffeinated
Why do you take pictures?
In order to look closer and focus my attention on certain subjects or phenomena.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Wherever I can find it - though it often comes in stages rather than all at once. At some point I will read about something I am interested in; later I will see someone’s work that perhaps connects with me in a visual or aesthetic way; then I will eat dinner; then at some point down the line different threads will come together into something resembling a project.
Who are your influences?
While developing this work, Richard Prince’s series "Untitled Cowboys" often came to mind as a point of reference. Other photographers/artists whose work I often look at are Wolfgang Tillmans, Trevor Paglen, Yinka Shonibare, Cao Fei and Felicity Hammond.
What determines the subject matter you choose?
There is undoubtedly a fair amount of unconscious bias that draws me to certain subjects over others, but on a conscious level I am broadly interested in how different technologies render and re-structure the environment that they depict or in which they exist. In the series presented here, I was particularly interested in how CGI renders shape our understanding and expectations of the future by encouraging us to imagine it as a place (rather than a concept). In this instance, I was particularly drawn to scenes that highlighted the comedy and absurdity of this task.
What impact would you like your art to have?
Most of the time I don’t feel like I have a specific goal in mind when I send projects out into the world. Although I might have certain ideas I want to communicate, these are not set out discursively in the work, and therefore I feel uncomfortable talking about impact, as this precludes its reception. My intention with this series, however, was to draw attention to the absurdities and tropes of the real estate market - especially in Tirana - and the ways in which it constructs idealistic and illusory futures. Particularly over the past 20 years in the city, public space has undergone radical changes as the building sector has become increasingly controlled by private interests. The city hosts hundreds of building sites that offer promising opportunities to investors, but little to the rest of the population for whom the resulting properties are often far too costly. The CGI visualisations that are plastered around building sites are an explicit attempt to crowd out this narrative - hopefully these images do some of the work to strip back their promises.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
For me, cinema is certainly one area/medium where I can keep finding new interest in works even after seeing them multiple times. Perhaps this is something inherent in the format, though in general my enjoyment of certain films rests often on the characters and/or the cinematography. Some films I have recently seen that fulfill these criteria: Ivan the Terrible (1944, dir. Eisenstein), Cléo From 5 to 7 (1962, dir. Varda), Nostalghia (1983, dir. Tarkovsky), Three Colours Red (1994, dir. Kieślowski)...
Is there anything you want to add?
I developed this series of photographs while undertaking a residency at the Tirana Art Lab in Tirana, Albania - I would therefore like to extend my thanks to them in providing the opportunity to do this work! And of course, a warm thank you to See-Zeen for helping to get this work out.
