Shane Lavalette

(from “Not My Chalet”)
© Anna Kanai

(from “Not My Chalet”)
© Anna Kanai

A few people have referred me to the work of Yale grad Anna Kanai.

Some thought of her work after seeing these images of mine, which I had made during the spring — believe it or not, prior to ever viewing her work. Others have said that her palette may be reminiscent of mine. Nonetheless, I neglected to post about her intriguing series Not My Chalet after first discovering it.

The large-format suburban photographs taken in New England by Anna Kanai during her studies at Yale are pictures that explore the world. Through a veil of bare winter branches and undergrowth, they show condominiums and suburban houses, partly obscured, yet still recognizable. A semi-permeable membrane permits furtive (fictional) communication in both directions. There is something slightly voyeuristic about these images gathered by a seeker, an explorer, a revealer of things, on her forays through the tamed undergrowth. They show a world determined to screen itself from the gaze of others. Revelation seems unwanted here, and introspection sought all the more. The intertwining branches read like a natural organic fence against intruders and in spite of the windows, the façades appear to be closed. The other is kept out and excluded. The title she has chosen for her series of works, “Not my Chalet”, emphasizes this sense of otherness, of not-belonging. In her photographs, Anna Kanai frequently merges the before-and-after into a fine, transparent membrane that becomes a metaphor for the mixture and mutual dependence of otherness and alienation, the excluding and the excluded.

– Urs Stahel, Fotomuseum Winterthur

I feel as though her work could fit with the some of the other nature-themed images that I’ve been looking at and others have also enjoyed.

Visit Anna’s website here for more from this series and other projects.