In our increasingly intrusive electronic culture, how do we delineate the boundary between public and private? “Surveillance Landscapes” is a body of work that interrogates how surveillance technology has changed our relationship to—and understanding of—landscape and place.
To produce this work, I hack into surveillance cameras, public webcams, and CCTV feeds in pursuit of the “classical” picturesque landscape. The resulting visual product becomes dislocated from its automated origins and leads to an investigation of land, borders, and power. The very act of surveying a site through these photographic systems implies a dominating relationship between man and place.
Ultimately, I hope to undermine these schemes of social control through my blurred, melancholic images—found while exploiting the technological mechanisms of power in our surveillance society.
—Marcus DeSieno
Editors’ Note: This work was recognized by the jury of the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards 2016—don’t miss the work from all 50 of these outstanding talents!
If you enjoyed this article, you may also like one of these features: Mass Surveillance, a series of images taken from publicly accessible webcams; You Haven’t Seen Their Faces, photographs of the 100 most powerful Londoners seen through the CCTV cameras that follow their movements; and Being Together, family portraits with a digital twist.