THE VISUAL GRAMMAR OF WILDERNESS

part 3

"The Visual Grammar of Wilderness" is a three-part project that explores the colonial concept of wilderness and the role of photography as a tool to represent and frame nature. With a focus on the highly idealized forest landscape, this third part dives deeper into stereotypical aesthetics (das Naturschöne) and atmospheres of wild nature. 

Based on artistic research with found photographs (in part 1), I reconstructed the visual grammar of wilderness photography. Those image styles and media stereotypes became the guideline for my own image-making. I applied the visual grammar of wilderness to take photographs of natural scenes, but all photographs were taken in places that are not associated with "wilderness": in large European and Asian cities. Then I used these photographs to create fictional wild landscapes. 

All works within part 3 reproduce the idealized aesthetics and moods of wilderness photography, but they show fictional urban forest landscapes or fragments of urban nature. The numbers in the work’s titles indicate the population density of the area where the photographs were taken. The works question the anthropocentric view of nature and play with the audience's perceptions and ideas of where natural beauty can and cannot be found.