El Arenal

Photographer duo Oliver Kröning and Dennis Orel were awarded the Canon ProfiFoto Sponsoring Award for their first large project together, El Arenal. Their wide-angle views are dedicated to the beach of the same name, one of German tourists’ most beloved vacation destinations on the island of Mallorca. But from this unusual bird’s-eye view and with a palette of retouched colors, they offer us a completely new way of seeing this location – one that dismantles the typical clichés.

Selecting this location presented the photographers with a logistical challenge. With its 50,000 hotel rooms, fifty clubs, and vast beach bars, El Arenal is one of Spain’s largest tourist strips. This made the position of the camera even more important: it seems to float over the masses rather than immerse itself in them.

The ways and wishes of tourists are summarized here well: what could be better than lying on the beach under the sun with a view of the sea and the palm trees, the beach bar at your back? But the images aren’t taken from the vacationers’ perspective but rather from Kröning and Orel’s high above the crowd. They devote their attention solely to those lying on their backs and stomachs – even the water is cropped out of the image – creating a two-dimensional pattern of bodies on colorful towels that seems to follow some random order of its own.

The photo series reveals both similarities and differences among the masses. Pairs and groups people areas of varying sizes, their location sometimes clearly determined by the placement of the round umbrellas. Kröning and Orel’s clever digital brightening of the sand serves to underscore the blinding light of the sun and transforms the beach into a beaming backdrop. With technical precision the photographers create their panoramic montages out of innumerable single images that belie the perspective from which they actually took the photographs. In doing so, they challenge us to a new perception of the two-dimensionally vast everyday beach scene.

Christina Wendenburg