Foam Amsterdam
The series Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt by photographer Anne Schwalbe can be seen as an ode to slowness - an ode to nature, light and emptiness. Schwalbe photographs her surroundings intuitively, with no preconceived ideas. Compiled in a publication or hanging together in an exhibition, the photos become the lines of a poem. Photographed prose. Anne Schwalbe visualizes stillness, providing another voice and a welcome change from the contemporary visual bombardment.In the series Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt (translated literally as: slow worm and grant leaf) Anne Schwalbe has reduced the world around her to core images. With no reference to location or other narrative aspects, she reveals what has caught her notice, or the things that fascinate her. Rain dripping into water, a close-up of a dung-hill or colourful confetti on the asphalt: each image has its own strength and tells its own story in the mind of the viewer. A rhythm of colours and forms is created, invoking contemplation and peace.
www.foam.org
The Forever View
A text for the exhibition Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt by Anne Schwalbe in Foam (31/03/11 - 11/05/11),combining poetry and prose. Written by Basje Boer
Excerpt - read the full text here: www.basjeboer.nl
a.
I’d been walking along the seasons, walking for eternity. Carrying
thoughts, thought of
in the earliest of the morning and
half asleep,
dreamed up colors
lost words and
shadow hands giving shape
to the mist.
All the seasons gave to me – dark blue and grey and rain drops making patterns – I would replace.
Severed Head Gallery, Dublin
Schwalbe's Blindschleiche und Riesenblatt describes an anonymous natural world, at once both familiar yet touched by the unreal. Sometimes sublime, Schwalbe's temporal Incisions explore environments defined by stillness, emptiness, and light, spaces in which man exists only as a tracedenoting the existence of an ambiguous present-absence. These dichotomous and discontinous elements conspire to suggest an elusively personal yet resolutely open narrative, one suggestive of the poetic possibilities layered within the microcosmic levels of everyday experience.Joscha Bruckert, Gebräu 1
The minimalistic work of the Berlin artist Anne Schwalbe never show more than a structure, an object, a phenomenon, nevertheless there is in every picture a microcosm. Detachad from well-defined places and without indications about the time - rain, forests and light become universally valid, poetic allegories.Youngna Park, Hey Hot Shot
Germany-based photographer Anne Schwalbe also photographs the lines and patterns in nature. Schwalbe, however, departs from landscapes into the abstract, often focusing on the subtle minutiae of undulations caused by raindrops, the varying densities of fog, or the asymmetry if a pine tree. She abandons the specificity of a place, avoiding characterizing them by their distinguishing markers. Instead, Schwalbe invites her viewers to interpret the spaces she photographs, saying, I want to have a complex void in my photographs. Her work evokes comparison to Japanese photographer, Rinko Kawauchi, who is well-known for her natural-light photographs of details in nature and everyday life. (...) Both photographers emphasize the beautiful color palettes expressed in nature, and show a welcome talent for honing in on the subtleties so many of us miss in the everyday.Jean Curran, LeCool Dublin
Her work is soothing and beautiful and her images draw you into another, more mediative, world. Her ability to emphasize the common detail in nature, whether it's blades of straw or a worm (Blindschleiche), draws you in it like it is your first time exploring the world. Anne's work doesn't just say that she sees, but it allows you enough space to see and say things for yourself.25books, Berlin
›What flowers there?‹ was the name of a book that more than 30 years ago was always at your fingertips at home. A book with pictures and information on countless plants encountered in forest and fields, often without knowing anything about them. Very often we have opened it. Anne Schwalbe´s ›Wiese‹ (meadow) of course is not an identification book but even a hike with many such encounters and discoveries. Flowers, grasses, ferns - they are simply there and radiate in an unnamed grassy paradise. Almost too beautyful to be true. The clear layout, the particular choice of materials, the special finishing - everything contributes to the fact, that we step on this meadow slowly and cautiously, look around in peace and can enjoy the often overlooked gems. Every E-Mail, my friend Wolfgang Beinert sends, ends with the words: EVERYTHING GOOD IS FRAGILE - SAVE IT! This also is the message of Anne Schwalbe´s WIESE.http://www.25books.com/
Bemojake, London
Anne Schwalbe's second self-published book continues her majestic editing and beautiful photographic approach. Wiese, German for 'Meadow', focuses on a gentle photographic catalogue of various kinds of plants in an un-named grassy wonderland. From the mystic to the banal, each photograph is somehow able to captivate the viewer, with a strange and eerie depth to the images, ghost-like and compelling.www.bemojake.eu