Olaf Otto Becker

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Olaf Otto Becker (*1959 in Travemünde, Germany) is on a search for the never-before-seen image, where the eye encounters the boundaries of familiar vision and nature becomes a mirr or of the soul. With his large-format camera, Becker captures the most subtle color nuances in great detail. For more than ten years now, Becker is visiting Iceland again and again, thus creating a very intimate landscape portrait of the island. He repeatedly visits the same places like old friends, documenting their change or changelessness. The first motif in our third Edition Hatje Cantz with Becker cannot be deciphered immediately. The photograph shows buoys that a fisherman on the east coast of Iceland set up in a shack, as protection from strong winds. The image’s power occurs from the strong color contrast between the buoys and the green nature, the hard shadows falling through the partly open roof, and the contrast of interior space and nature. The second motif is formed by the two waterfalls of the Ófærufossar, located in a chasm in the southern foothills of the Icelandic highlands. An arch just above the lower waterfall is all that is left of the natural basalt bridge that once spanned the river, before it was destroyed by melting snow in winter 1992–93. The second motif is especially characteristic of Becker’s inimitable point of view, having been created in a diffuse, milky light. The artist calls it the light of the north, which is as important to him as the motif itself. “We can only see things through the light, and this light can convey any kind of mood.” Show more