Tyrolean photographer Lois Hechenblaikner grew up in Alpbachtal, Austria, and journeyed the world (primarily through southeast Asia) as a travel and documentary photographer since 1981. Today he lives and works in his hometown. It is here that he documents in various work groups the changes the landscape has experienced through the extremes that mass tourism has inflicted on what was once, only a few decades ago, a primarily agricultural landscape. His series “Snow Public” is an artistic stroke of luck as it is composed of pictures that one could call optical illusions. On the one hand the dynamic events pictured on the photographs makes one contemplative and think about the complete penetration of the mountain landscape. On the other hand, this perception transforms Hechenblaikner’s pictures from the documentary to the artistic, as these images possess a bewitching beauty. They possess an alluring quality of impressions and remind one of painted tableaux. And they open the space wide into our senses. Ambivalence and multifaceted possibilities of reading pictures were always characteristics of good art.

“As a young man the valley became too constricting, so Hechenblaikner incorporated his wanderlust with the profession of photography. He reported on India, Burma, Vietnam, New Guinea, Bhutan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Hechenblaikner found, however, what would become his life’s topic in his immediate environment. Upon returning to Austria the well-seasoned traveler’s perception of his home that had been exposed to rapid economic growth through increased tourism had changed dramatically. The most interesting photographers have always found their photographs in their own surroundings and astounded us by seeing and formulating what we have never noticed or have simply overlooked.”

Thomas Weski (excerpt from an unpublished text)