Helene Schmitz ”Thinking Like a Mountain”

Helene Schmitz’s photography centers on man’s complicated relationship with nature. In several photographic projects, she has explored the power balance between man and nature – and when it goes off kilter. Working analogue with a large format camera.

Like a poet of Natural sciences, she reaches straight into the viewer with her observations on passings and of states in change. Her works, where each title has been carefully crafted with humour and poetry – and often with a play on language – tackle humanity’s brutal encroachment on nature. She does this in a way that moves us as much with its beauty, as with its underlying threat.

“I’ve long been fascinated by the meeting of the forces of nature and the human desire to organise and exploit. The human endeavour to define, to control what is uncontrollable, and to conquer, is such a strong driving force, but where is it taking us?”

She is the girl that often sought out nature; by horse or by foot. There she experienced a sincere connection with the forest and the animals that gave such intense experiences of beauty. There the foundation of a deep commitment was built, and a drive to research nature and plants, that has resulted in several books and projects where she works together with, among others, historians, philosophers, scientists, and writers.