Somewhere in Another Place

Mike Vos presents a new sort of landscape photography, one for the Anthropocene, one that is a practice of both time and place, and one which seeks contextual transcendence by altering what and how we see. Somewhere in Another Place (Buckman Publishing) distills more than three years of work and countless miles traveled across the continent into 49 double exposure photographs made in-camera with no digital intervention, representing nearly 100 distinct locations. We are invited into a procession of carefully invented places, to witness their visual echoes, to see their waters mirror ancient shapes. Here you’ll find vessels mixed with mountains, waterfalls framed by windows, stalactites crossed with a satellite dish, geologic formations stitched with ephemeral human structures on their way out of existence. Because all imagery is composed, overlaid, and captured manually on a large format camera, Vos plays an existential Tetris of fitting together immersive new terrains and opening a unique plane to consider the mesh of interactions between landscape, the built environment, and the self.

“We humans have layered our planet with astounding accomplishments and littered it with dreadful mistakes. Mike Vos’s arresting, quietly eloquent juxtapositions remind us that beneath all our artifice and clutter, the land still remains. His images, at once inviting and jarring, often mysterious, echo our own complex legacy — but also bear witness that ultimately, Earth’s underlying truth always reemerges. It will absorb the scars of our memory and weather our passage.” Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us

Mike Vos is a self-taught artist from Portland, Oregon. He has explored storytelling across various mediums, primarily using large format photography. Most recently he has been an artist in residence with MASS MoCA in 2022, and returned as an alumnus in 2024. In 2023 he was an artist-inresidence with the Akureyri Art Museum in Iceland, following up from his previous residency and exhibition at Bær Art Center in 2022. Vos has four photographs featured in the city of Portland’s permanent collection. His projects have received support from grants through the Regional Arts & Culture Council, The Ford Family Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and the Oregon Arts Commission. His work is represented by El Palmar Gallery in Mexico City.