Street Front in Butte, Montana | Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa
Past exhibition

Wim Wenders. Pictures of the Surface of the Earth

06.25.2002 - 10.01.2002

German artist and film director Wim Wenders began taking photographs back in 1983. From the start, he has brought his unique sensibility to focus on the villages and landscapes of the United States and Havana, the forests and temples of Japan, the coast of Galilee and the endless roads of the deserted Australian outback.

Using the solitary medium of photography as a point of departure, Wim Wenders brings the viewer closer to landscapes void of humanity but charged with a powerful notion of the human presence. Behind the images is the desire to capture in his memory a moment in time that is about to disappear. The transient nature of time, as well as history and the idiosyncrasies of different places become a reflection of the artist's vision. His images of rugged landscapes worn by the passage of time mirror the evolution of civilization while perpetuating a single moment. Rather than the artist selecting the array of colors that envelops every object and every detail of his images, it is a case of this multitude of colors choosing him.


Unlike moving images, photography offers Wim Wenders the possibility of giving the background of an image the same importance as its foreground. Each photograph stands on its own, creating its own individual context with no need for the others in the series. They are, in short, the immediate translation of Wenders' existential interpretation of the unknown.

 

Street Front in Butte, Montana (Strabenfront in Butte, Montana), 2000
Courtesy: Anthony d'Offay, Londres

Share