Project XI

Project XI, from Latvian photographer Janis Deinats (b. 1961) is a series of black and white photographs of street surfaces. In each of the images, one can detect the contours of a symbolic object, faces or figures.The commonplace appearance of cracks and shapes on the ground makes them easy to ignore, but Deinats claims: “We are not standing on the ground, but rather on signs, myths, images, stories, assumptions, imagination, surprises and miracles.” Because of the black and grey colours and the simple, raw structures, the photographs even come to resemble graphite illustrations.