VOYAGE PITTORESQUE
Photographic project by Benjamin Merten
Photographic project by Benjamin Merten
The title borrows from a book by Moritz Rugendas, which was first published in 1835 and contains 100 lithographs from Brazil. The painter drew the 'exotic' landscapes from Humboldt, who attested to his special talent for depicting the 'physiognomy of nature'. Almost 200 years later, the sublime has vanished from the romantic motifs. Today, tourists are carted off by boat to the glaciers of Patagonia. The (wrong) Amazon is on fire and in Minas Gerais, Brazil, the dam of an iron ore mine cost 272 people their lives. The seemingly intact landscapes are scarred by the Anthropocene and Climate Colonialism. And just as then, the trail leads back to Europe, where architectural projects are getting more and more absurd and the greedy food, leisure and tourism industries are not pausing for nature.
Postproduction by Chromatichead
