Vineyards in monochrome
Vineyards in their quiet phase, and the silence that I myself lived through in those years.
Nine black-and-white photographs.
Rheinhessen, 2016–2019
Everyone remembers Rheinhessen once they've driven through its gentle hills. The rows of vines, the light, the wide open landscape. An image that stays in the memory.
This series was created during the months when this scene takes on a different appearance.
Between December and early March. The vineyards are in their dormant phase, just before they awaken.
No leaves, no greenery, no abundance.
What remains are structures:
the poles, the vines, the silhouettes of the trees against the sky. The landscape reveals itself in its most purist form, and it is precisely there, in this reduction, that a hidden drama lies.
Between 2016 and 2019, I walked through these vineyards, early in the morning, with our dog by my side.
Alone, yet not lonely.
Rheinhessen beyond the obvious shows how I discovered the familiar landscape in colour with a new medium that could show what I had always perceived in it, but could never express. Metamorphoses of Silence is the other side of the same period: not the view of the landscape, but the inner reflection of the phase of life I was going through at the time, in black and white.
I didn't come to document what I see, but to capture what happens between the moments: the awakening, the waiting, the silence that isn't empty, but full.
Through conscious camera movement during exposure, the sharp outline of the subject dissolves. What results is no longer a depiction. It is an imprint of movement, of time, of the act of seeing itself.
I have arranged the nine works in this series into an internal arc: from the breadth of the landscape, through the detail of the individual vine, to the portrait. Each picture nevertheless remains a moment of reflection, both mine and that of the vineyards.
Early March, mist over the vineyard rows.
The poles stand out against the horizon like notes on a sheet of music:
Vertical, steady, waiting.
What doesn't show itself:
the wires on which the vines will later climb. They are there, just as I knew in these winters that something was growing within me, even if it wasn't yet visible.
The Selztalstellung, a fortification line from World War I, near Zornheim, on a clear March day.
A single fruit tree between the rows of vines, its bare branches stretched against the sky. The energy of spring is still invisible, but already palpable. A tension on the verge of breaking.
It's the image with which I first felt: I can manage to express what I perceive.
80 × 53 cm | €490
Late January. The stems from the previous harvest still hang from a vine. Fragile skeletons that once bore grapes.
Against the white background, they seem to float. Caught between what was and what is yet to come.
53 × 80 cm | 490 € | SOLD
A frosty January. The rows of vines are covered in snow.
A horizontal camera movement that interacts with the natural lines of the rows until the order of the vineyards gives way to a ghostly landscape.
Klar und verschleiert zugleich.
80 × 53 cm | €490
Early spring. An old vine with patches of bark peeling away, the morning still shrouded in mist.
The hanging strips of bark follow a dance-like camera movement that lends the wood and bark an ethereal quality.
On the border between reality and imagination.
120 × 80 cm | 890 €
A morning stroll through the vineyards during the dormant season.
A circular camera movement draws the rows into concentric lines. The bright path in the centre of the frame becomes the axis around which everything revolves. A pull inwards that simultaneously leads to infinity, just as the solitude of these early morning hours drew me inwards and simultaneously opened me up.
80 × 53 cm | €490
Late December. A vine with its annual shoot still fully intact, before pruning begins.
Its tentacles stretch out in all directions, a final gesture before it settles down to rest.
Strength and vulnerability in the same image.
It is the picture in which I myself began to show myself, to express what was going on inside me.
55 × 37 cm | 220€
Late February, with the last vestiges of winter still in the air. The path to the chapel in the Zornheim vineyards.
A solitary tree serves as a vanishing point, with the rows of vines converging upon it. A zooming movement that makes the very act of moving visible.
Moving and arriving at the same time.
55 × 37 cm | €200
Early March, the vineyards still in their dormant state.
Three vine portraits.
Each staff has its own personality: wounded-expressive, slender-upright, compact-resting. The circular and spiral camera movement accentuates what the eye otherwise overlooks: the individuality within apparent uniformity.
I had previously portrayed children for years. Here I portrayed the vines in the same way, each as its own personality within the supposed uniformity of the rows.
3-piece set, each 55 × 82.5 cm | Overall dimensions from 185 × 82.5 cm | €1,500
The works in this series were created between 2015 and 2019 and were printed in 2019 as a limited first edition.
Most works are produced in an edition of 1/1, plus a maximum of 2 artist’s proofs.
The dimensions and prices for this product are fixed and cannot be customised.
All prints were produced by WhiteWall on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, as glossy gallery prints on 3 mm aluminium Dibond with an aluminium frame and 2 mm acrylic glass.
Each piece comes with a certificate of authenticity, the artist’s stamp and a personalised art passport, all hand-signed by the artist.
All the images in this series were created using Intentional Camera Movement (ICM):
deliberate camera movement during exposure.
No shaky camera work, no coincidence, but a controlled movement that follows the subject or flows around it.
Horizontal, circular, radial, dance-like.
Every movement is a decision.
The decision to go black and white didn't happen straight away. I initially experimented with colour, using a technique that was still new to me. I then consciously chose black and white because it reflected the loneliness, during a time of change, including early morning walks with the dog. Quite simply, a phase of life that I wanted to reflect on through reduction and silence.
What you see was created at the moment of capture.
The vineyards in their dormant season are not the opposite of summer. They are its other side.
The vineyards in their dormant season are not the opposite of summer. They are its other side.
What this series shows is not sleep, but readiness.
Not absence, but a form of attentiveness that manifests itself in silence.
Because that is where it is most clearly felt.
I often travelled alone during these winters, yet I was never lonely. Perhaps that is the same truth the vineyards reveal.
Which image stands out in your memory and really speaks to you?