THE VISUAL GRAMMAR OF WILDERNESS

part 1

"The Visual Grammar of Wilderness" is a three-part project that explores the colonial concept of wilderness and the role of photography as a tool to represent and frame nature.

In today’s Western languages, "wilderness" is understood as an untamed and remote landscape with pristine nature. This idea goes back to the US national park movement of the 19th century. With the intention of protecting nature, areas in the west of the USA that had long been inhabited by indigenous communities were declared to be deserted wilderness. To this day, the Western concept of wilderness is based on the myth of untouched nature and the dualism of humans and nature: wild nature worthy of protection can only be found where humans are absent.

This first part of the project is based on artistic research with found images. With various strategies of collecting, arranging, and re-arranging images, I researched visual representations and media stereotypes of wilderness. All works are experimental arrangements to examine how photography and visual culture reproduce the wilderness myth and feed the desire to be immersed in an "untouched" natural landscape.