Simon Kossoff

ALTERED STATES OF AGORAPHOBIA, or ASA

The compulsion to travel, to move from one place to another, has always been present in humankind nature. Whether it be local, national or international, Simon Kossoff always found himself either in motion or, if not, dreaming about it.
Paradoxically, in the periods of dreaming, Agoraphobia — the “irrational fear of entering open places, or leaving one’s own home” — has gripped him and, at times, crippled him. «Altered States of Agoraphobia» is a search for a personal orientation between the dream or idea of a place as opposed to the experience of it in reality. As a result, the project is a collection of psychic coordinate points found between the imagined America the photographer brought along from England and the actual America he discovered on his arrival in the country.
These photographs are half-truth and half-fiction. In fact, they are a psychogeography, filled with personal symbolism and tangled with influences so old they were already part of reality long before this journey of experience even began. Nonetheless, this project is the author’s continued secret revolt against it in the United States of America today, despite recent quarantines.

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THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Simon Kossoff is a British photographer who is living quietly in rural Arkansas, USA. A mountain of photo editing and a dream of finally being in the same place long enough to make sense of more than ten years of travel, adventure and picture-making defines his life.
Since his arrival in 2008, Kossoff has circled the United States numerous times in an anti-clockwise direction. When travelling alone, he got used to spending his time here, there and in the middle of nowhere. In fact, he went camping in the wilds most of the time, and he fell in love with the vast beautiful space between the cities and the people who live there. Kossoff acknowledges his photographs are his only proof and witness to a life spent living outside, on the road, without calendar, schedule or quarantine.

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