Elizabeth Greenberg [1990, Photography]
Photographs in the Imaginary Places portfolio express the ways in which places are experienced—treating imagination as the space between what is believed to be known and remembered, and the mystery of the unknown. Like Hiraeth, the untranslatable Welsh word that evokes a deep longing for a home that may have never existed, these images embody a yearning for places possibly ancient and unreachable. There is a nostalgia woven through them, for locations that can no longer be returned to—if they ever truly were. Through the act of photographing, the artist seeks out traces of what may have once been, listening for echoes of lost places, that are both nowhere and everywhere. The landscapes encountered on these wanderings offer enigmatic clues—bridges that span time, connecting the past with the present, the mundane with the extraordinary. These moments are sought after as they are understood to be part memory, part imagination. Each image transforms the real into something dreamlike, turning familiar spaces into artifacts of reverie. The photographs are printed as archival pigment prints.