Intervention in Landscape

My childhood was mostly filled out by playing in the forest. Far away from any electronic entertainment I spent a lot of time exploring and wandering and sometimes to be totally absorbed by the wooden world around me. It was fabulous: As if all this n­ature had cast a charm on me I could loose myself among the giant trees, rocks, looking for caves or mystical plants. No matter if I was alone or with someone. Things changed while I got older: Not only that I left the place I grew up, I also lost the ability to loose myself in this enchanted surrounding. Electronic and digital media had changed my perception. My view on natural places has become more fragmented and disrupted. I lost the feeling for the wholeness. Mentally and physically I have broken apart from where I former was part of. When I now encounter nature, what I find is more and more a landscape that is produced and cultivated by human civilization. The picture of the unbroken and untouched natural harmony has disappeared.

I have documented these changes in several series of images. One of them is the sequence »Avalanche Protection«. The approach in this particular series of photographs is to exemplify how close the natural and the artificial, the beauty and the distortion exist next to each other. My place is now the one of the observer not of the participant: Using my camera and record landscapes I cannot but being outside of the whole taking fragments. These fragments are equated with a past I cannot restore. Through my photographs I want to ask the viewer to consider where we live and how we relate to our environment.

Cycle of Works

Arctic Landscapes

Type of Work

Longtime project, free work

Location

Island

Time Frame

2009