Short description of Untitled Landscapes
In Untitled Landscapes I strove to find an approach towards an ideal of a landscape. The concept was to show landscapes in their origin, untouched and empty of human signs, to show them in their silence and width. My interest is based on the imagination of an archetype of a landscape or how landscapes can be projected from the own memory. Landscapes, that awake a feeling of “being-there“, that are evocative projections of an unreal, dreamlike, illusory utopia, that create a state of timelessness and contemplative silence where we can sink inside ourselves.
II am interested in paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain from the 17th century, and later painters such as Caspar David Friedrich from the Romantic epoch and their approach towards the ideal of the landscape. My interest is not to show the landscape as a geographical point nor as a representation of nature. Strictly speaking, Untitled Landscapes could also be photographed in the romantic areas of the 19th century.
The immense meaning of romanticism is still present in our time, probably more than ever before.. Through my landscape photographs I try to find the connection towards the desire of romanticism and regain consciousness of our origins. The landscape photographs, which mysteriously hold the time for a moment in this world are documents of a timeless journey to longing for the longing.
Michael Klöpfer