Birkenwald 4 2008 / 2011

It almost seems as though you can feel the soft moss in your hands that looks to have become one with the stone. Even the giant trees of New Zealand’s primeval forests have been completely enveloped in the mossy green.

André Wagner, who captures these scenes with his camera and compresses them into images of suggestive power, continues to trace nature’s untainted powers. The photo artist travels the world always on the lookout for new motifs. His trips to New Zealand and India yielded particularly impressive impressions of the landscape and people. The untouched nature in New Zealand with its colossal contrasts inspired Wagner to take different kinds of pictures: these he staged with dramatic effects of light and dark, which he uses to place attractive accents within the landscape photography. The elements’ untamed power involuntarily becomes alive – gnarled trees brave gusty storms and two craggy cliffs open to reveal waters so clear that their surface and color cannot belie their fathomless depths. In moments like this, we directly experience nature’s intensity as well as the photographer’s devotion to his subject. The same unbounded fascination he has for New Zealand’s breathtaking nature is also palpable in his light-filled portraits of birch trees. As both photographer and photographic artist, Wagner charges every single natural occurrence with new content, which elevates it beyond the purely aesthetic message.

This effect is yet again intensified in Wagner’s spectacular nighttime shots, for which Wagner sometimes employs extremely long exposures. “The recorded light is my way of tracking time,” Wagner explained and, one wants to add, of tracking nature. Light plays a critical role in his photography, be it digital or analog: “Photography means drawing with light.” The concept of drawing points to painting, the art form from which Wagner originally hails. And his sensual photographs certainly elicit associations with painting. Often one ties to find signs of repainting or retouching in his landscapes – but in vain. The photographic art of André Wagner, who was born in Chemnitz, Germany and now works and lives in Berlin, is neither reworked nor manipulated. And both private as well as public collectors have come to value that.

Almut Andreae