Young Hungarian photographer Bence Bakonyi first came to our attention via his excellent Dignity series, a surrealistic exploration of self-identity captured in arid mountain landscapes. Cognition, his latest collection of images, picks up where the earlier series left off. The Shanghai-based photographer traveled to Dunhuang and Zhangye Danxia in northwestern China, along the Silk Road, where ancient ruins emerge from giant sand dunes. There he captured images of tiny figures milling about the immense desert landscape, putting the viewer in the position of a distant, outside spectator.
From his statement:
From the perspective of these photographs we experience that kind of comprehension which is possible only through considerable withdrawal. Due to its viewpoint, the series represents the spirit of the group. It is not the person, but the community which appears as an individual entity: we see it moving in unity, the trace of its path, and the process through which it discovers the unknown.
View the whole series on Bakonyi’s website.
(via Faith is Torment)