Monument, Utah, USA, 1995 (2013)

Taken from his series of photographs of the American landscape and suburbs entitled 'God's Country', 'Monument, Utah, USA, 1995' touches on a theme central to Kander's work ' the impact of human presence on our surrounding environment. The scale of the image seems somehow improbable, the ant-like human figure impossibly tiny in the vast desert scene, dwarfed by a crumbling and obscure monument. There is a certain distance in Kander's photographs which confounds a normal sense of scale or depth, and which creates a sense of the surreal. The dreamy coloration of the image heightens its strangeness - the blushing pink skies and pale blue snow could perhaps be an image of a different planet entirely. Contemplative and evocative, 'Monument, Utah, USA, 1995' is a transporting artwork with existential reverberations.