In the continuation of his 2013 project No Cliché, which aimed at conveying an unusual imagery of much-photographed Iceland, Greco had decided on January 2020 to further portray the island. But as the pandemic cut short any perspectives of travelling back, Greco set on a different journey by discovering the game Death Stranding and its landscapes evocative of a mystical and fantasized Iceland. This unexpected turn of events gave a new dimension to the project.

Using the game and its constraints as a playground for experimentation, Greco undertook a meticulous yet playful photographic process, translating his approach to photography to the making of digital images. In the same way his polaroids had previously challenged the stereotyped representations of the country, the images that have emerged frame aspects of the landscape that usually remain unseen. But where No Cliché goes against the dominant imagery emanating from the island, Place(s) embraces its codes and plays with the ambiguity of an anonymous landscape made familiar. As digital images, they question both in-game and traditional photography by setting a point where the two meet and intertwine.

Pascal Greco is an italo-swiss self-taught cinematographer and photographer based in Geneva. His photographic work focuses on architecture and its place in the landscape. His two previously published works result from a 8 Year-long exploration of Hong Kong : its atypical and unique architecture ( Hong Kong - Perspectives, Prospectives, Typologies, 2018 ) and its iconic neon signs ( Hong Kong Neon, 2021), which were notably featured in The Guardian, Vice, Monocle, Fast Company, Bloomberg CityLab, GUP, Polka and Fisheye.

Death Stranding is a game developed by Kojima Productions. Its photographic mode was added after being repeatedly asked for by the fans. It allows control over most parameters of a camera ( aperture, zoom, focus ) and some basic postproduction tools ( contrast and saturation ).