POEMS OF LIGHT

Volkmar Herre reveals the nature of the north through the philosophical keyhole of his pinhole camera. Having lived in Stralsund for over two decades, he has been steadfastly drawn to the island of Rügen and its coastal island Vilm, a nature preserve.

Here the photo artist can find just what he needs to satisfy his longings. He becomes one with his motifs, paused for minutes – sometimes hours – while his camera sketches the pictures through a tiny hole. One could call him a true Romanticist. To him, photography is “Being alone. Observing precisely; Opening the senses; Plunging into humility; Amazement; Dialogue; Awareness; Finding the image’s form.;Sensing time beyond the moment; Fraught with visions.” Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) might have responded similarly about why he painted on Rügen.

Volkmar Herre’s motifs include the sea, boulders, trees, and the famous chalk cliffs. “Is it the softness inherent to the pinhole camera’s images or is it the passing of time, which is inscribed by the light emanating from things, that one believes to know as nature’s secret language?” says the artist about his works, which seem to originate from a “pre-democratic” time.  With deliberate patience he counters the technological progress that has allowed people to capture nature in fractions of a second without necessarily understanding it. He uses simple means to get to the depth of the soul of the coast’s elements. “These images are different, as we see them in reality. They tell stories. They recall fairytales or dreams. Eternity manifests itself; Secrets; Archaic beauty; Infinite peacefulness. No one is witness, only the pictures are witness.”

Romanticist poets and artists searched for the blue flower in the German landscape; an allegory for the quest for inner unity, and eternity. In his “Poems of Light” Volkmar Herre has depicted it with the fine hues of the Baltic Sea.

Horst Klöver