Photo Editions – marcus maeder

On this page you can purchase limited photo editions by Marcus Maeder. If you would like to purchase a specific edition or photo, please contact us using the appropriate link in the descriptions. You will then receive further details on production, prices, payment and terms of delievery.

Japan. Marcus Maeder 2023/2024

In his photo series Japan, Marcus Maeder explores encounters and relationships between man and nature. In the first part, which was taken in the province of Nara with its mountains and forests, Maeder is interested in human infrastructures that become interfaces between the human and the non-human – where nature appropriates the infrastructure, for example by simply overgrowing it. Infrastructure as an object of competition and shared use: everywhere in the world, man installs infrastructure in order to master nature – but the ravages of time are gnawing away at it, turning it into places of cohabitation. In the second part, we are in an urban environment, in large cities such as Tokyo and Kyoto. Here, nature is artificially, almost completely pushed back, infrastructure seems to prevail. Cities are hotspots of human culture, where nature appears above all staged, as an abstract idea that finds its echo in Shinto shrines or ceremonies in public spaces, for example, which have long since lost their connection to the natural environment.

Edition of 27 prints (wood frame on request), printed on Tecco Semigloss 260g A3 paper.

Please click on the photo above for a preview.

Snow. Marcus Maeder 2024.

When the snow melts in the Alps, dynamic graphic structures and patterns emerge from the ground and snow cover, houses, mountains, electricity pylons, etc. The landscape becomes an ephemeral graphic event that changes and disappears within hours. A snapshot in black and white taken with an old digital camera gives the impression that these are historical photographs. The snow is quickly history, the patterns only tangible as an event in the ephemeral memory of the mountain valley.

Edition of 27 prints (wood frame on request), printed on Tecco Baryt 270 g A4 paper.

Please click on the photo above for a preview.

Madrid. Marcus Maeder 2023

Photography is known to be the art of light. Light is its essential design element and is combined here with movement. The result are gestural light paintings reminiscent of Informel art. The light pictures – taken in the evening and at night – are not entirely abstract, however, as concrete elements can always be discovered in them; plants, buildings from the surroundings of the “El Retiro” park in Madrid. The theme of light in this park seems all the more fitting as the central figure in the park is a statue of Lucifer – the bringer of light.

Edition of 14 prints (wood frame on request), printed on Tecco Semigloss 260g A4 paper.

Please click on the photo above for a pr eview.

Bois de Boulogne. Marcus Maeder 2022

Edition of 10 cardboard boxes including 12 color photographs, printed on Tecco Baryt 270 g A4 paper.

Please click on the photo above for a preview.

Marcus’ latest photo series documents an afternoon in late autumn in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Captured on analog film with the legendary Nikon F3, Marcus reveals people’s contradictory relationships with nature: The staying and moving in a safe, staged nature – and connected with it the romantic images of nature, as we all have them in our heads and want to know fulfilled. The contradictory coexistence, the interweaving of technical, social and natural systems – the artificial is confronted with the irregularity, the incomprehensibility of nature, even if we try to shape it.

Sicily. Marcus Maeder 2022

Edition of 10 cardboard boxes including 25 color/black and white photographs, printed on Tecco Semigloss 260g A4 paper.

Please click on the photo above for a preview.

Hemerochoria – aesthetics of coexistence. Marcus Maeder 2021/2022

For several months Marcus Maeder has been working with his camera in the wild ravines in the middle of Locarno in Switzerland. He is investigating the new vegetation that has settled there: At first glance, one thinks to be in the jungles of Borneo – but a closer look reveals a mix of native plants and exotic garden refugees. Maeder’s research deals not only with the aesthetic appearance of these new plant communities, but also with the vocabulary of invasion biology, which at times recalls xenophobic discourses in human societies. And in doing so, he asks questions such as: What will the vegetation of the future look like – vegetation that has adapted to climate change in Switzerland? Is there such a thing as a “native flora” in nature at all, or is it subject to constant change anyway, over large periods of time?

Hemerochory is the term used to describe the spread of plants through culture. Hemerochore plants or their seeds have been deliberately or unconsciously brought by humans into an area that they could not have colonized (or could have colonized much more slowly) by their natural dispersal mechanisms, or they have been enabled to colonize that area by dispersal under their own power by culture causing site changes. In their new habitat, they are able to persist without purposeful human assistance. Hemerochore plants can both increase and decrease the biodiversity of a habitat.

Edition of 10 cardboard boxes including 12 color photographs, printed on Tecco Semigloss 260g A4 paper.

Single prints 180 x 120 cm on alu dibond available (ask for pricing).

Please click on the photo above for a preview.

Acla: Terrestrial textures

In the immediate vicinity of his recording stations at the Acla gorge, Maeder used his camera to examine the morphology of the ground surface. Alpine ecosystems are characterized by a great diversity – on the one hand, this is due to the exposure: Depending on altitude and orientation to the sun‘s path, soil morphology and organism communities are composed quite differently. In addition, alpine soil is subject to constant change at many locations: The alpine region is always in motion – erosion by weather, avalanches, human influence (construction projects, agriculture) and, last but not least, effects of climate change (thawing of permafrost, drying of the soil matrix) expose alpine soils to constant transformation. Maeder‘s photographs are snapshots of such transformation processes: Exposed, weathering rock, break-offs and slipping rock masses, plant pads; a dry litter layer of needles, leaves, branches and pine cones and traces of human intervention form the texture of the photographs, which at times are reminiscent of abstract paintings – the intuitive brushwork of a painter is replaced here by physical and biological processes that form a multi-part pictorial motif.

Edition of 5 prints 100 x 70 cm (wood frame on request), printed on Tecco Semigloss 260g paper.

Please click on the photo above for a preview.

Acla: Variations

In music, texture refers to a pattern created by stringing together variations of the same motif. Marcus Maeder has applied this compositional method to his visual observations in the Aclatobel in Switzerland: A wildlife camera is installed at one of Maeder’s recording locations, documenting what is happening in a selected landscape and image section. When something moves in the camera‘s field of view, an image is generated. Not only passing animals can be seen – sometimes weather events or light phenomena also „fall“ into the camera trap. The chosen perspective between ancient spruces into the Rabiusa gorge and the entrance to the Safiental valley corresponds to a classic romantic motif, such as those found in Caspar David Friedrich‘s paintings.

The graininess and limited resolution of the wildlife camera images are reminiscent of historical analog photography – particularly at night, when the camera shoots images with infrared flash in even „worse“ quality. Especially in these images, the reduced resolution creates textile-like structures. In this context, Maeder is also interested in the aesthetic qualities of a historical impression of the digital – for image textures, as we know them from the first digital images at the beginning of the computer age. To enhance this effect, the photographs are monochrome and printed on classic baryte paper.

Edition of 5 prints (wood frame on request), printed on Tecco Baryt 270 g A3 paper.

Please click on the photo above for a preview.