The nature photography of Bernhard Edmaier rests between landscape photography and land art. They’re pictures of the earth as we’ve never seen it, authentic and beautiful, but also without any romanticism or esotericism. Edmaier arranges his painting-like compositions through his choice of distance from the subject alone. Through extreme close-up or a remote view, arctic seas, rivers, volcanoes, cliffs, lava fountains, sulfur vapors, colored saline lakes or salt springs appear abstract. There is evidence of the phenomena of geologic evolution that only the learned geologist can identify and interpret. The pictures, in which people never appear, nevertheless seem to speak of them and their cultural history. It’s like being reminded of an antique floor mosaic, a modern color-field painting, or sensing echoes of the Op-Art of the 1960s.

Press Commentary

"The print of time on the skin of the Earth. Splendid."
GEO Paris, France

"Bernhard Edmaier raises the art of aerial photography to new hights. His images are hauntingly impressionistic, even as they display a clarity of tone
and texture that recalls the sharp-focus realism of Eliot Porter…"
Natural History Magazine, USA

"…environment becomes Art … The unspoilt landscape turns into artistic
expression in the images of Bernhard Edmaier, engineer and geologist. He has
become one of the most prominent photographers in the world. He has improved the standards of aerial photography and has contributed to a greater understanding of the earth’s crust."
La Stampa, Italy

"Bernhard Edmaier has given us a new perspective to natural landscapes …
The deep beauty of these scenes cries out of stewardship..."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in LIFE Magazine, USA

"Bernhard Edmaier is the most interesting aerial photographer in the world...He rediscovers the world for himself and for us...Pictures that astonish, pictures as we’ve never seen before...Pictures that tell of the force of nature and time processes in a peculiar way, so grand that our power of imagination can hardly grasp it... Edmaier’s pictures are hyper-precise and at the same time enchanting in an abstract way. They’re hymns to the beauty of nature. The pictures of this photographer are like a song that announces the magnificence of our planet.
"ARD Kulturweltspiegel"

The world of Bernhard Edmaier is full of color ... he’s flown over glaciers and canyons, arctic seas and deserts and reeled in photos of these planets that no painter could have dreamed up with more fantasy.
"Süddeutsche Zeitung"

Phenomenally beautiful ... The opulent handiwork is a photo study in totality. ... Geographic art from the most enchanting.
"Bild der Wissenschaft"

... Bernhard Edmaier shows us the world as a luminously bright color palette – breathtaking aerial photos and close-ups of nature’s structures ... If color could explode: Bernhard Edmaier’s nature photography recalls action paintings. This time in his compositions the photographer choreographs nature’s intoxicating colors to 'Symphonie Phantastique,' ventures anew into the abstract presentation of landscape, which his last pictorial book already presented as a singular adventure in nature photography. ... as if geology was a department of art history."
fotoMAGAZIN