Crossings, Walks and Drives

I record. I record my movements in nature; I record nature.

........The photographic process has the unique ability to collect light. I utilize this with images exposed over an extended period of time: time determined by the space, by my experience in that space.

........Crossing the Upper New York Bay – One Day and in The Last Day at Walden are explorations of a locale over the course of a day. Here I collect the specific light of a specific day; the light becomes the focus, the light illuminating the objects, the space: the primary element of the scene. Crossing the Upper New York Bay – One Day are 24 crossings on the Staten Island Ferry in New York, each image exposed for the entire ride. Here the details of the New York Harbor no longer play a role, Manhattan is the island in the sea, and in some images, a hint of the skyline of early summer of 2001.

........The series, The Last Day at Walden, is comprised of sixteen images taken on September 5th, 2003, surveying Walden Pond on the same day in the annual cycle that was Thoreau’s last full day at Walden. Each photograph was exposed over a complete walk along the shore around the lake. Starting with the first light of the day, each walk began every 8 degrees of the sun’s elevation, in reference to Thoreau’s surveying as well as his reflecting.

........Mostly I record walks, where I am in direct contact with nature, but there is also Crossing the North American Continent, an eight-day exposure, a record of the entire road from New York to San Francisco. Driving, not walking for this image, a contemporary version of the trek West, the yearning for the promised place at the horizon. Or is the promised place behind the horizon? Crossing the North American Continent is a survey of the continent but also the extract of a drive. The road becomes the means for a discourse with the ever-elusive vanishing point. Details on the sides of the road are no use for the traveller with a destination in mind; the road becomes a background to his thoughts.

........Using the same technical approach, of long exposure while moving, I explore also the momentous light of a place, the place in a special state of being. In these images, I focus on places personally important for me: a gentle sunset scene on Cape Cod, the grandness of the deserts in the American West, and also landscapes of mystery in my native Germany. The remembrance is here the guiding principal.