Waters (Spuren), 2018
The photographic printing plates for the book Waljäger (1938) that inspired Horizonte (2018) and associated production materials are also the point of departure for an extended series: Spuren probes questions of heritage, value, and nature as a witness to its time. The series harnesses the means of photography to investigate nature and archetypes of the natural as products of economic and ideological interests.
For Waters (2018), ten printing plates from the book that depict nothing but the sea were selected and compiled. Corrosion had eaten white spots into the zinc plates. The sea donned a new guise, which was restored, photographed, and then edited. The aim in working with these seascapes was to distill a counter-image to the romantic-heroic argument of the historic source and to limn a portrait of the sea. To this end, the motif was isolated from its narrative context. In producing a portrait of an almost evanescent nature, I also raise the question of which inscriptions—beyond instances of visible destruction—human interventions into nature can leave behind and to which extent photographs of timeless landscapes subliminally convey their past and often invisible casts.
I
Waters (Spuren), 2018
C-print on polyester, aluminum
Dimensions variable
Installation view, Fahrbereitschaft, Berlin
Photo: Mathias Schormann, Berlin