Rheinhessen as you've never seen it before.
Between the familiar and what lies beneath.
15 colour photographs. Rheinhessen, 2015–2019
I've lived in Rheinhessen since 1992. The hills, the rows of vines, the October light – I know these not as a visitor, but as my everyday life.
So when I started working with a moving camera in 2015, I had already lived here for twenty-three years.
The power contained within these vines, the growth from the first shoots to the ripe grape, I had felt all these years without finding a way to show it.
This series is where I found this path.
Between 2015 and 2019, I walked through the same vineyards that I had known for over two decades, but for the first time with a tool that could show what I had long perceived.
The camera movement during the exposure dissolves the fixed contour. What remains is no longer an image, but the force itself that lies beneath the familiar.
The 15 photographs in this series chart a year's growth, from the first shoots in spring to the fading in November. Each image captures a single moment from this cycle, which I sought out repeatedly and felt most intensely at that precise moment.
The vine rows in May, just before the year truly begins.
The fine shoot tips move as if they have something urgent to say, and at the same time, they seem to remain in a state of anticipation.
120 × 80 cm | 890 €
Zornheim. May.
The light falls through the first leaves as if they were glowing from within. What I see is less a plant than a state of being.
120 × 80 cm | 890 €
A circular motion that draws the vine into the centre. The image looks back.
The transition from one state to the next, lasting barely a day, is compressed here into a single moment.
55 × 55 cm | 420 €
Hill near Mommenheim, June.
The rows of vines draw the eye upwards. The panoramic format captures this expanse through which they are carried.
250 × 50 cm | €1,500
Oktober.
The vines are exploding, as if giving their all one last time before winter arrives.
55 × 37 cm | SOLD
Near the Zornheim Wine Pavilion, on an October day when the landscape is already quietly bidding farewell. There is hardly anything left, and that is precisely what makes such an impression.
80 × 53 cm | €490
August.
A vine leaf in the wind and a circular motion that turns it into a kind of vortex. The peace is gone.
55 × 37 cm | 220€
The grapes, still a long way from what they are meant to be.
The image revolves around her, as if wanting to hold onto the promise before it's fulfilled.
55 × 37 cm | 220€
Rheinhessen, May.
A drive, a tree as a gatekeeper, vines as swirling lines around it. The image has a pull you can feel directly.
120 × 80 cm | SOLD
Zornheim, March. The vine stakes lead uphill, towards something indefinite. You follow them, not knowing what awaits you at the top.
The image poses a question and leaves it unanswered.
80 × 53 cm | €490
May, but with an autumnal glow.
The season is deceptive. The rows of vines are strict and regular; movement makes them appear fluid.
What you see depends on how intensely you look.
80 × 53 cm | €490
Two branches that almost touch, forming a window.
Behind it: the vineyard as it prepares for winter dormancy.
The image has something threatening about it; you stand before it and hesitate.
80 × 53 cm | €490
A single vine shoot, October, Wahlheimer Hof.
Powerful, in motion.
If you look long enough, you can see faces in them, or at least you think you can.
The image plays on precisely this boundary.
80 × 53 cm | €490
Halloween, Hahnheim.
The red of the vine leaves takes over everything. The vines themselves are barely visible anymore.
Or are they?
The image is a question that you answer for yourself.
80 × 53 cm | €490
November, just before nightfall.
An almost denuded vine before dusk. The only picture in this series that tips into stillness instead of motion, the cycle closes.
80 × 53 cm | €490
The works in this series were created between 2015 and 2019 and were printed in 2019 as a limited first edition. Most of the works exist in an edition of 1/1, plus a maximum of two 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 images in this series were created using the technique of Intentional Camera Movement (ICM). In this process, the camera is deliberately moved during the exposure. Horizontally, rotating or swinging, depending on what the moment demands.
The resulting motion blur is neither a flaw nor a correction. It is the image itself.
What you see was created at the moment of capture.
This series was the beginning. Here, for the first time, I found an expression for a perception I had long held, in a landscape I had long known.
Rheinhessen is a region that many believe they know, including myself, for twenty-three years.
This series is the moment I learned to look closer. Not because the pictures hold answers, but because they start where the obvious ends.
Metamorphoses of Silence, the black-and-white series from a part of these years, shows the other side of the same time: not the view of the landscape, however, but what I carried within me while I saw it.
Rheinhessen is a region that many believe they know, including myself, for twenty-three years.
This series is the moment I learned to look closer. Not because the pictures hold answers, but because they start where the obvious ends.