Anthropogenic landscapes

Petra Spielhagen, Anja Teske

Petra Spielhagen and Anja Teske use their cameras to investigate the realities of European landscapes. In the process, the artists’ interest goes well beyond mere documentary inventory. The critical questions they pose concern the gradual shift from natural to cultural landscape, and consequently inquire into our very relationship to nature.

Petra Spielhagen’s photo series concentrates on nature that has been transformed into areas designated for work and other utilitarian purposes. Some of her photographs, for the most part nocturnal, were taken in Westland, Europe’s largest greenhouse complex; others depict a nocturnal corn harvest. The landscape, starkly illuminated in the darkness, underscores the sense that nature has been interfered with in an unnatural way.

In her works Neighbour’s Garden and Limitations, Anja Teske explores minimal, private landscapes in the backyards and gardens of various European neighbours. The framed sections of lawns and hedges, at first glance seemingly abstract, evoke the fragile states of a nature domesticized in ways characteristic of the respective country; at the same time, they document the landscape’s disappearance.