The Voyage Of Discovery

By Carly Steinbrunn

Touching upon the realms of geography, botanics, anthropology and zoology, Steinbrunn’s body of work borrows from the varied approaches of the scientific register, and from the history of photography. Echoing Le Gray and Blossfeldt to evoke the aesthetic catalogue of photography’s own evolution, Steinbrunn also enfolds found images to question the transparency of the medium, where a photograph is simultaneously an index of reality and a fabrication.

Steinbrunn’s project is wilfully inconclusive, offering only signs to a pathway through a territory that exists only within the universe of her book. Ultimately, the work bears reference to that particular history which links photography to exploration – the successive conquests of the sea, the air and outer space – and Steinbrunn suggests that, in an age where every island has been charted, every frontier has been breached, the only journey left is inside the image itself.

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Mount Hermon

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Filipino jacket

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Exotic tree

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Bobo tribesman

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Iceberg

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Landscape

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Still life

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Coffee flower

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Parchment

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Gorilla foot

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Valpara