It is that time of the year again: entering the Sony World Photography Awards. This is a perfect moment to evaluate the previous photography-year as well. While 2012 was the year of Dutch highways for me, 2013 was the year of mountain landscapes. These images are collages made especially to be printed big. A big plus of this series is that it fits neatly into a category (Landscape), which all my previous entries did not.
I wanted to leave the idea of primeval earth intact, the mountains refer directly to earth‘s genesis. So I removed modern human elements (lifts, avalanche dampers), but left some small roads and the crosses that have been toted up to the mountain peaks by extraordinarily devout people, some more than a century ago. Because no matter how much we humans seem to be removed from nature, we are still part of it, those elements refer to that.
On every photograph (except the one with all the clouds) there is an airplane in the sky. This is a subtle reference to modern times of überconsumerism, without spoiling the whole photograph, as airplanes tend to do with the environment. (I read a flyer inside an airplane not long ago: the company is proud that they produce only the emissions of a small car per capita per traveled kilometer, but what if you take your small car and go to your destination with two persons? Right, emissions halved… Ever wondered why it is usually cheaper to go by car when your traveling party starts to exceed two persons? It is all about consuming resources if you ask me.)
Unfortunately in this low resolution you can hardly or not at all see the crosses and airplanes, but this is what the photographs would look like from a distance.
