LAND_SCOPE - Fotoarbeiten von Roni Horn bis Thomas Ruff (German/English)

Since the end of the eighteenth century, the art of Romanticism has shaped our idea of idyllic and sublime nature. But painters like Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich shifted the focus. As a brilliant technical draftsman, Friedrich transformed actual landscape scenes into images full of sym­bolic ­meaning. Many of these paintings captivate with their entrancing and oppressing depiction of spatial vastness—a way of seeing that also shapes contemporary photographic art, which ­appears to focus ever more on changes of natural and commercial landscapes and examine the ­effects of industrialization. The book brings together works by nearly sixty artists from the DZ BANK art collection. This synopsis, divided into seven chapters rich in ­illustrations and text, reveals the great variety of possibilities with which artists approach landscape in the medium of photography. Different types of landscapes are presented, such as ideal landscapes and deserted areas, political territories and agricultural landscapes. In addition, ­these photos display the potential for abstraction in the ­photographic image, allowing landscape to be negotiated as a concept, or even to appear as a digital formation.

Ulrich Pohlmann has been the director of the photographic collection of the Munich Stadtmuseum since 1991. He was guest lecturer at the Universites of Hamburg, Zurich, and Munich, where he lives and works. Christina Leber has been the director of the DZ Bank Art Collection since 2011 and also edited at Snoeck 2018 the catalog Fotofinish, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of DZ Bank Art Collection. Katharina Zimmermann and Erec Gellautz are fellows of the Alfried Krupp von Bohen und Halbach-Stiftung, Essen.