OLAF OTTO BECKER - BROKEN LINE

OLAF OTTO BECKER (1959-)

German Photo Book Award, 2008

Taken in the clear light of the midnight sun, and therefore almost shadowless, these photographs offer breathtaking views of an untouched landscape from a remote part of our planet. Olaf Otto Becker (*1959 in Travemünde) brings us images of overwhelming beauty, the result of his adventurous journeys in a rubber raft across the icy seas of Greenland. Like Under the Nordic Light, his series from Iceland, the photographs possess a certain melancholy and stillness reminiscent of the grandeur of Romantic landscape painting. At the same time, the outlook of an unperturbed explorer and his recording of exact location when photographing turns them into testimonies to a time when an increasingly warm climate is precipitating the disappearance of the glaciers. In this way, the images record the artist’s awe at the beauty of creation—as well as the dangers facing it.