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Examining Nature Through Technology with Dan Holdsworth's 'Mapping the Limits of Space'

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Modern academia has a tendency to divide the worlds of art and science. It starts in the cafeteria— did you sit with the mathletes or the art freaks? On to college, and you’re deciding between a BS or a BA (a different kind of BS). What happens when we dissolve the boundaries of these two worlds? Dan Holdsworth’s Mapping the Limits of Space, released in June by Hatje Cantz, explores just that. “The limits of space are the perceptual limits that we encounter at the frontier of human knowledge and understanding,” Holdsworth tells me, in response to my curiosity about the title and his multidisciplinary approach. “Science continually pushes at this frontier, expanding our perceptions to a new limit. Working with photography has always meant developing my process alongside developments in technology, but in recent years I saw the possibility to work alongside scientists, using new tools and techniques as they are themselves being developed. My interest was to develop the work from within the process, using these raw materials of science at a cutting edge frontier, rather than to adopt them as an after thought.”  Produced in collaboration with the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Holdsworth’s work is illuminated through thought-provoking essays by Emma Lewis, Oliver Morton, Alistair Robinson, Joshua Wilson, and Madeleine Kennedy. Spanning twenty years of Holdsworth’s career, the book shows how his photography represents more than a moment captured in time. Through his mastery of light and space, Holdsworth transcends the human experience, connecting the viewer with natural forms from a vantage that feels both alien and revelatory. Sometimes the landscapes look Martian and unfamiliar, while in other images they appear sublimely divine, like we’ve snuck a peak at the framework of creation. In Holdsworth’s own words, “Science is our way of connecting to nature and to our own human nature. These small (digital) interventions in my work are my way of trying to connect myself, and to gain a better understanding and new perception for our place in relationship with nature.”  Holdsworth challenges the very notion of perception. Viewers are forced to reckon with their biological relationship to the environment in contrast with the increasingly technological frameworks through which we encounter the world. So how do we navigate this new human position, spanned between the natural and the digital? As Holdsworth notes, the images, “are not about ‘transporting’ the viewer elsewhere, but about rethinking what our body is, in relation to this strange new type of object.” As for what’s next, Holdsworth suggests that the future of photography will focus more on bridging the gap between ourselves and the outside world. “If we could consider photography to be the technology of extra- sensory vision,” he says, “then I’m working in ways that continue and extend this trajectory.”  * * * Written by: Tori Adams  Photographs by Dan Holdsworth