Entry Title: " When Light Casts no Shadow"
Name: Edgar Martins, United Kingdom
Category: Professional, Abstract


Entry Description: Edgar Martins was granted special airside access to some of the most interesting airports in Europe. The
airports he chose have had a key role in history or the history of aviation (for example the Azores, which was a
compulsory stop for transatlantic flights prior to 1970 and a military base in both World Wars). Almost all his
images were produced at night, using the aprons’ floodlights, moonlight, long or double exposures of between ten
minutes to two hours.
Some of the airports on the Azores archipelago are unique. They are amongst the very few black-tarred runways in the world, and it is the relationship between the dark
tarmac and the fluorescent painted signs and runway markings that lie at the heart of some of Martins’ most
arresting images. This unusual combination allowed him to produce incredibly abstract images, with a very
long depth of field and often with the use of minimal lighting. In some, sky and ground merge in darkness
with only the lights and airport hieroglyphics to orient us. Yet even these are hard to decode, for whilst this
is a landscape of signs that can be read by the knowledgeable – pilots and air traffic controllers, for example –
it remains perplexing to the uninitiated. There are also areas in which this complex visual language is further ruptured, as new and old markings merge, echoing the overlapping of time, space and different eras, and disturbing language and meaning itself. These juxtapositions of sign and shape and their ambiguity of meaning are central to these remarkable images.
is at the heart of these remarkable images.

Edgar Martins is Portuguese by birth and grew up in Macau, China, where he studied Philosophy where he published his first novel entitled 'Mäe, deixa-me fazer o pino'. In 1996 he moved to the UK, where he later completed an MA in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, following a BA (Hons) in Photography & Social Sciences at the University of the Arts, London (formerly The London Institute). He has won numerous awards, including the inaugural Jerwood Photography Award [UK, 2003] and New York Photography Award (Fine Art Category) [USA, 2008]. In 2008 he was attributed the prestigious BES Photo Prize, and awarded a SONY World Photography Awards as well as second prize at the Terry O'Neil Award. He was also selected as a finalist of the Prix Pictet. Other important awards include the Thames & Hudson & RCA Society Book Art Prize, for his debut monograph 'Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies'. Topologies, Martins’ fourth monograph, was published by Aperture Books and met with critical acclaim. This work has toured internationally at the Orient Museum [Lisbon], Centro de Arte Hélio Oitticica [Rio de Janeiro], PS1 MoMA [New York] and included in photography festivals such as Format [UK], Lodz [Poland], Lianzhou [China], Art Algarve [Portugal], Foto DC Week (Washington], amongst many others. Martin's latest book 'When Light Casts no Shadow' was published by Dewi Lewis in November 2009 and exhibited at the Belém Culturel Centre [Lisbon]; Galerie Caprice Horn [Berlin]; Porta33 [Madeira], Galerie Melanie Rio [Nantes], amongst others. In 2010 his new series 'Ruins of a Gilded Age' will tour Europe and the US, culminating with a solo show at the prestigious Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian [Paris]. The work will also be shown at the Electricity Museum, [Lisbon} as well the Photographer's Gallery [London]. His work is held in various high profile collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, [London], National Media Museum [Bradford], Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation [Lisbon], FMPLJ Foundation [Lisbon], Bes Art [Lisbon], EDP Foundation [Lisbon], Ilídio Pinho Foundation [Oporto}, Museu de Arte Contemporânea [Elvas], Centro de Artes Visuais [Coimbra], Dallas Museum of Art [Dallas, USA], amongst many others. Martins' work is also featured in several private and corporate collections. In 2010 Edgar Martins was commissioned by EDP Portugal to photograph some of the most ineteresting hydraulic projects in Europe. This work will be compiled in a book in 2011. Martins was considered by US art critics as ‘one of the most influential artist of his generation, working within the medium of Photography’. Edgar Martins works and lives in the UK.