HOME SWEET HOME
…or maybe bittersweet home? For a long time homeland has been a difficult idea for me. In Germany it still has a somewhat bad aftertaste, because of its dark history and the völkisch ideology connected with it. People’s love for their homeland was abused for politcal manipulation and eventually to start a war and a genocide.
Since I can remember, saying that you’re proud of your homeland meant that you had a tendency towards a nationalistic mindset.
So I was not proud. Not at all.
For the last few years I have travelled extensively throughout Germany. I have visited numerous national and nature parks as well as rural areas.
Landscape photography has enabled me to develope a deeper and more accepting relationship with this country of mine. Looking for compostions and light moods has sharpened my awareness to the unique sense of place that many locations have. The stronger this sense of place feels the more I’m inspired to look for images.
Despite the high population density and comparatively small space, there is a wonderful variety of landscape types – from beaches and dunes in the north, to moors and heathlands, numerous diverse low mountain ranges and finally the Alps in the south.
There is little true wilderness left in this country and much as I love these places, I’m just as much drawn to rural areas that show how humans have wrested a living from the Earth. I’m equally fascinated by places that once again are mostly left to their own devices, that nature snatches back from us.
I still do not feel proud to live in Germany, since my own actions had little to do with that.
However, I can now say that I’m glad to live here and there is still so much left to discover.
