Bas Princen (*1975 in Zeeland, the Netherlands) belongs to a generation of photographers who in their very own way make reference to so-called New Topographics. This is a group of what in the meantime consists of ten big-name landscape photographers, including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, and of course Bernd and Hilla Becher, who had their first big international success in 1975 with an exhibition of the same name at George Eastman House in Rochester. While they distanced themselves from subjectively-tinged photography in an attempt to render stark reality as faithfully as possible, Princen objectifies urban space in a comparable way, but with an ironic twist. Seen through Princen's lens, anonymous urban architecture assumes an almost magical and slightly surrealist air. Our Collector’s Edition provides a frank perspective of an astonishing piece of architecture: a small, white chapel is fit carefully into a heavy, gray cliff, which juts out over it in a half-threatening, half-protective way.
