Wim Wenders - Pictures from the Surface of the Earth

In 2004, ARoS' West Gallery presented the exhibition Pictures from the Surface of the Earth, featuring large-format photographs by German film director and photographer Wim Wenders (b. 1945).

Wim Wenders' photographs depict a world where the mystery and poetry of people and their surroundings take centre stage. Wim Wenders began working with colour photography in 1983 while looking for a location for the film Paris, Texas. He used photography as a way to sharpen his senses and as a tool to get to know light, colour and landscape. Since then, he has not only used photography as a tool to find suitable locations for filming, but also as a medium in its own right. Wim Wenders finds his favourite subjects in the vast, remote and desolate expanses of the United States and Australia. He photographs monumental landscapes where the horizon is always present and compositionally divides the image into two halves.

The absence of people is one of the first things that strikes you when you encounter the exhibition. However, if you look closely, there are traces of people in all the photographs. The tyre tracks that form an endless road through the desert of the Australian outback or the farmed landscape of the American state of Montana point to the life that is lived in these places. It is the no man's land between nature and culture, the overwhelming landscape marked by civilisation, that interests Wim Wenders.