Martina Hoogland Ivanow - Speedway

In the frozen dead of night a group of speedway riders circles a dirt track. Gathered under the racetrack lights in an almost ceremonial fashion, they seem like a secret society engaged in an enigmatic ritual. Yet, any clear answer about what we are actually witnessing keeps slipping away, like rain on a windshield. This is the darkly opaque universe that Martina Hoogland Ivanow's »Speedway« beckons us to enter. A world of minimal molecular motion. A landscape of ice, snow, dirt and night. One in which shadowy speedway bikers - almost as an afterthought - seemingly race to outduel the overwhelming forces of nature rather than compete with each other. Perhaps just to keep themselves warm. But nature is indifferent and unforgiving. It keeps on winning, forever on the verge of turning everything into an arrested state of ice and darkness. Moving from one image to the next we hope to get closer to the real action. But the deeper we immerse ourselves into this universe the slacker the ties to the real world become, allowing the fictional dimension of photography to take hold. The unfamiliar overlaps the familiar. Without realizing it we find ourselves in a twilight zone where reality meets the dream and the drivers turn into leather-clad, one-gear, no-brake ghost riders.