Thames & HudsonA darkly evocative compendium of images exploring natural, constructed, imaginary, and subconscious underworlds, curated by renowned image collector and social media figure Stephen Ellcock. Underworlds takes readers on a captivating visual odyssey to the underbelly of everything, beginning with depictions of life and natural systems existing beneath the surface of the Earth and ending with imagery that emanates from the depths of our subconscious. Work by world-renowned artists―from Peter Paul Rubens and René Magritte to contemporary artists such as Kara Walker and Roger Ballen―is featured alongside recently unearthed images from archives around the world.
Split across five chapters - 'Beneath the Surface', Human Habitation and Exploration', Underwter Worlds', 'Imagined Underground Worlds' and 'Subliminal Realms' - this beautiful book explores humanities obsession with what lies below. Exploring burial chambers and mines, caverns and Charon, Hells, hallucinations, hollow Earth and hermits Ellcock takes us on a fascinating visual journey of everything underneath.
My own interests lean towards the fictional so those chapters on caves, crypts, sewers, quarries and the like were of less interest than those exploring our imaginative relationships but throughout Ellcock has chosen images that present a sumptuous feast of art and photography that encapsulates the creative interplay between the real and the imagined in our eternal need to explore the unknown and the hidden, and our obsessive search beneath and beyond.
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