Loredana Nemeș’ Greytree and Heavensea work was created over a period of almost three years on the island of Rügen, a place chosen by the artist as a retreat. In the Jasmund National Park, she began photographing the beech forest and juxtaposing these shots with views of the sea’s expanse.
Her frequent visits allowed Nemeș to become familiar with the forest. Always the same paths, always the same beech trees, always the same roots over which she stumbles.
And yet many things are new each time: the rapidly changing light by the sea, the winds, the clouds. Nemes’ medium format camera translates the elements into subtle nuances of grey.
In her silver gelatin prints the delicate green of May and the bright yellow tones of October are turned into the same shade of grey. A bracket, emphasizing the eternal cycle of the seasons, growth and decay.
The abstraction of the black and white technique as well as the portrait format, unusual in landscape photography, focus the viewers gaze on the relationship between the trees, groups and ‘personalities’ and their connection with the adjacent sea.
In her works, Loredana Nemeș shows a landscape, ancient and eternal, which hundreds of generations before us were able to experience and others should see in the future: tranquillity, dependability and sturdiness of the beech trees and the sea; the magic of mist, light, and clouds. In all this, a fragility and fleetingness that Nemeș expresses in her photographs.
The artist feels accepted in this landscape, in which all her roles are allowed to fall away from her
“Breathing is easier in Sassnitz. There, a faster light and the leaves in May like butterflies on the delicate branches. The ground around the beeches seems closer, no need for escape. The muscles relax. Grey trees that know me: from the Carpathian Ridge I come, from a beech land left behind.“
“In Sassnitz, a sea at the edge of the forest. It cannot snap at me. It throws back the light and knows all the greys. Then we stand at this edge with arms and branches and roots that grasp and nourish each other, and nothing hurts anymore.“
After a dozen visits in every season, the series was exhibited for the first time in the Stadthaus Ulm.
A publication will be released in 2023 by Hartmann Books.
Loredana NEMEȘ (b. 1972)
Born in Romania in 1972, she first studied German and Mathematics in Aachen before turning exclusively to photography as an autodidact in 2001. Since then she lives in Berlin working on photographic series which she develops over a longer period of time.
Nemeș’ approach is not scientifically cool, but emotionally sensitive. Her photographs captivate not only through the authenticity of their depiction, but also through their artistic visual language, for Nemes seeks a suitable form of photographic expression for each cycle. She constantly questions the medium of photography, its limits and possibilities, and adapts them to the themes of her work: Identity, gender, cultural differences and emotions such as greed, fear, love. The last three culminated in a large solo exhibition of the same name, which Loredana Nemeș showed at the Museum Berlinische Galerie in 2018 and in which the artist for the first time presented abstract works as well as her own texts in addition to her portrait photographs.