Loredana Nemes: Gray Tree and Sky Sea

Over four years and seasons, Loredana Nemes has photographed the beech trees that are characteristic of the landscape above the chalk cliffs of the island of Rügen, made famous in art and history. What began as a relaxing walk has turned into an impressive, long-term photographic observation of this “forest seascape.” The pictures she has produced are of an ancient, archaic landscape that has survived for many generations and will continue to survive over many more in the future. They capture the quiet, the beauty, the robustness, and the fragility of the beeches set against the backdrop of the smooth, timeless horizon above the sea; and the magic of fog, light, clouds, snow, and the seasons of the year. At the same time, however, they also convey a sense of both ephemerality and hazard, because the forests are at the mercy of climate change. Perhaps the beeches at the Königsstuhl remind Loredana Nemes of the forests in Romania’s Carpathian mountains, where she hiked as a child with her father, and this explains the profound emotion expressed in her photographs? At any rate, the beeches on Rügen are linked to the beeches in the Carpathians, for they are all part of a UNESCO natural world heritage site, the “ancient and primeval beech forests in the Carpathians and other European regions.”