Black & Wide

Fascinating, deep, unfathomable – Peter Schlör’s photographs are somehow unsettling. These are images full of mythology and symbolism. In 1993, at the age of 29, he launched his first tour through Germany’s museums, thereafter quickly establishing himself on the international art market. Hallmarked by profound compositional severity and a strong contrast between light and dark, Schlör’s pictures exude a tension-charged atmosphere between stillness and drama. The Canary Islands with their trade winds have been a favorite destination for several years. This is also where his latest series "Black & Wide" was created.

The Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, the early Impressionist William Turner, and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz all liked to look up into the sky and depict what they saw in the clouds. Following in this tradition, but with an intuitive gaze all his own, the photographer Peter Schlör captures from an elevated vantage point atmospheric impressions of the brittle beauty of the Canary Islands. These are scenes devoid of animal or human life, the photographer being fascinated instead by the dazzling light glancing off the dusky volcanic landscapes and the play of clouds over the pine forests so typical of this region. The book takes the reader on a journey to an unknown corner of Europe. It reads like a story of how, behind the symbolic and mythological allusions we often impose on the majestic and imposing beauty of nature, there always lies a history that takes us even further back in time to the beginnings of our planet Earth.