Everyone has a few in a holiday album. Photos of a wall covered with multicolored mold or an impressively rotten fence, preferably shot in close-up. The temptation is often great to enlarge them and hang them on the wall as homemade Jackson Pollocks. But whoever takes these kinds of photos more often will sooner or later find themselves performing a decorative trick. That pitfall makes Earth’s beauty all the more remarkable. Erik and Petra Hesmerg had the ideal subject for a hyperaesthetic photo series: an overgrown junkyard in the Swiss village of Kaudorf. Judging by the Cadillacs, Studebakers, Messerschmidts and Panhards, the scrap had been there for a while when the photographers came along. Shortly after their photo shoot, the place was evicted by order of the government, which creates an extra nostalgic air.

Sing along under the skin
By photographing museum works of art for years, the Hesmergs know that if you simply capture something inherently beautiful, it does not become less beautiful, but flat. It takes something extra to bring it to life. To turn a photo into more than a registration. To elevate the photo itself to a work of art. At the junkyard, they zoom in just enough every time to let the mystery of the environment that you don’t see but suspect subcutaneously sing along. They don’t get lost in details that would make the image abstract. A wheel or door always reminds us of where we are. Occasionally we are allowed – carefully directed – a little more view, of a faded yellow Fiat 500, for example, which lives up to its nickname ‘backpack’ by being parked on the roof of a gray old-timer.

Depth of Field
The depth of field is such that nothing is obscured, but there is still a painterly edge to the images. The contrast gives the greenery of trees and moss something juicy.
And then the prints, which are not behind distant glass, are also of a velvety quality. Because of all this, you can see car paint almost turning into rust and getting mixed up with rotting leaves. Can you smell the moist earth that drowns out leftover oil.
Gallery owner Maurice van Bakel, who is also an architect and interior designer, pinned the photos onto a framework of bare beams that is as simple as it is ingenious. The construction forces the visitor to zigzag between the wrecks, as if you were in Kaudorf yourself.
Earth is a fantastic example of how you can create a spatially convincing and aesthetically superior experience with flat representations by combining a flawless pair of eyes with an imaginative presentation form.

Text: Edo Dijksterhuis
Newspaper: Het Parool
Section: Art & Media
Date: Friday 11 December 2020