The project holocene is a photographic approach to the primordial character of forest landscapes and to the relationship between humans and nature in the age of the Anthropocene. At its centre is the search for the “naturalness” of an environment shaped by humans. The series not only sharpens our understanding of how many-layered the concept of nature is, but also sheds light on our enduring longing for the primordial and the authentic.
The wet collodion process renders colour in its own way: it is barely sensitive to green. Foliage and leaves appear dark, while the sky, because of the process’s sensitivity to ultraviolet light, stands out in white. The forest landscapes photographed for holocene therefore look as if they had grown untouched – primeval forests as they might have existed in the Holocene, before humans settled down. In fact, these places have been cultivated by humans for centuries. The beauty and complexity of landscapes altered by humans thus shift the meaning of nature in the age of the Anthropocene.
The search for naturalness in photography is as old as the medium itself. From 1849 onwards, pioneers such as Gustave Le Gray turned to the Forest of Fontainebleau as the subject of a romantic feeling for nature. The artificially planted forest was a place of retreat and longing for the painters of the Barbizon school – just as the works of holocene are fragments between the primordial and the cultivated landscape.
holocene works exclusively with historical processes. Glass negatives are exposed in a large-format plate camera and developed on site in a darkroom tent. The prints are made on handmade 19th-century photographic papers, in direct contact with the negative and by the light of the sun. Each picture is unique – a physical object that cannot be reproduced.
