Frank Darius

Edition Hatje Cantz Verified independent store

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The title Welcome to the Garden is an invitation to go for a walk through the world of Frank Darius (*1963 in Berlin), everyday terrain in which what is naturally rooted crosses wi th what has been cultivatedly uprooted and shoots forth its own blossoms. When he takes a photograph of a motorcycle left standing in the middle of an automobile underpass and splattered with slush, it does not appear to be dirty, but grounded. This is how the photographer makes a connection to its true nature: horsepower. His pictures simultaneously show the expansiveness of his perceived garden of being, the buzzing of the whole.The process of discovery that Darius records with his camera is an admiring, often astonishing one. Without capturing what he has seen or plucking something from the whole, he is satisfied with having touched it. Thus his stories grow forth as flowering moments in the here and now.We are pleased to offer a edition Hatje Cantz photograph of a romantic wood in a driving snow—beautifully photographed with a highly atmospheric touch. Yet this is a deliberately selected, extraordinarily deceptive idyll. In actuality, the motif is Berlin’s Teufelsberg, with its US military SIGNIT station. During the Cold War, the CIA spied upon East Berlin from the top of this rubble heap in West Berlin. Symbolically buried beneath the rubble of four hundred thousand buildings bombed during World War II lies the shell of the German school of military technology, designed by Albert Speer as part of the new international capital of Germania—a building that had proved to be indestructible. Show more