Manfred WillmannDas Land

From the accomplished editor of Camera Austria, comes this stark, but personal photo collage of images taken from 1981 to 1993 of his other home on the Slovenian border.
Among friends and family, Willmann turns his roaming and inquisitive eye on the people, landscape and life that surrounds the house and the land nearby. Intensely saturated, those glossy color images fill the pages creating tableaus that raise questions about our physical relationship with reality and our alienation from reality even in direct experiences.

"I engage with human beings and their life, nature. Sometimes I work on all of these topics at the same time, sometimes I focus on one of them more intensely: to get particularly close to physical existence. Reference to nature can never be drastic enough to show its sensitivity (transitoriness). I, too, must protect myself from my vulnerability. (...) Speaking about the things that life is really about: growing, blossoming, fruition, coldness, love, killing and being killed, being able to kill oneself, being able to look every which way." (M. W.)

"No doubt, Willmann looks lovingly on the people, animals and landscape of Styria, and as he concentrates on the down-to-earth character of moments in their daily life, "Das Land" is certainly a song of praise. Still, there is nothing pastoral and nostalgic about it, and the images do not convey anything a nationalistic politician could exploit for propaganda purposes."
(Hripsimé Visser, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam)