Edgar Martins: Untitled, from the series The Accidental Theorist, 2007

“Returning from a shoot, late at night, I came across a nearby beach and was struck by an arrangement of poles in the sand. I didn’t know how I wanted to photograph them or what they meant, but I liked the idea that my perception of that space, at the time, seemed to enter a different register. In that place where sea meets land and where both dissipate into nothingness if felt as though I were having a glimpse of the edge of the universe.”—Edgar Martins

And so began Edgar Martins’s work on one of his most acclaimed series, The Accidental Theorist, for which he was awarded the best fine art photography series at the 2008 New York Photo Festival. Here, long-exposed images of beaches at night challenge the viewer’s perceptions. This previously unpublished photograph from the series features artful composition and rigorously controlled framing; Edgar Martins creates sublimely beautiful views of often un-beautiful sites. Minimalist nighttime beach scenes, forests ravaged by drought-fueled fires, and Iceland’s stark terrain have all served as subjects for his large-scale color photographs. Certain themes recur throughout Martins’s work: a sense of place and a sense of alienation from place, a sense of mystery, and a sense that something unsettling has just happened or is about to happen. As he states, “My work is a journey of recognition: space, as our object of understanding, is changing and because of this one needs to find a new critical language that supports it, and a new system of knowledge from which to derive our glossary of life. In my work, there is a permanent ambivalence between poetic failure and the promise of success.”

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