Reservat

Reserve is part of the work group Cadastre. The photo series deals with the retreat of humans out of nature. The photographs were made in the Bavarian Forest Nature Park, Germany's largest and oldest nature reserve. The artist's main concern was the question; how do pre-existent images of nature influence the design of such areas and how are these images conveyed to the viewer, who is usually a repose seeking tourist?
In contrast to areas used for economic forestry, the forest is here left to its own devices. In this way the forest can be expected to revert to its original form. Wilderness is recreated through an "act of culturation"*.
Due to the general absence of original nature in our modern experience, such a place poses the question what a newly made wilderness would actually look like. Can this wilderness really be left to its own devices or should it be so designed to appear as it did in the past. Should earlier native species be reintroduced into it or should it be given over to the influence of a globalised nature, allowed to harbour immigrant plants and animals from other parts of the world? Most importantly, can a spatial and visual separation between human and nature be maintained long term, as the footbridge on each photo would appear to suggest?

(* Brigitte Franzen, Die vierte Natur: Gärten in der zeitgenössischen Kunst, Cologne 2000. Cf. p.10)