Christian von Alvensleben: The “Archaic” project and “At the End of the World – Finistère”

From September 19 to November 16, 2014, the Schleswig City Museum presents new black-and-white photographs by Christian von Alvensleben. "Archaic," comprising 35 images, explores the primal forms of life and confronts the viewer with the transience of all things human in four distinct series. One series focuses on individual portraits of participants in an archaic-looking Greek spring festival based on ancient customs. The other three series present the viewer with purist close-ups of primeval objects such as shells and stones, bones and cacti.

These analog recordings, taken with a plate camera, are supplemented by a sequence of images that was only produced last year on the coast of Finistère in Brittany: “At the End of the World – Finistère”. This cycle, photographed digitally with a Nikon D800E, deals with the approximately 23 million year old granite rocks of the Armorican Massif with their magical shapes and structures in 540 motifs.

“When the earth was still flat and on the horizon the dark sea plunged into unfathomable depths, the wild coast of Finistère was the end of the world for people.
The remains of the ancient mountains appear in dark cliffs and huge boulders of granite thrown together as high as a house.
Mystical, the figures and faces of the rocks and stones formed over millions of years by wind and water.
A playground of the gods.”
Christian von Alvensleben

With “Archaic” and “At the End of the World – Finistère”, the photographer Christian von Alvensleben, who lives in Schleswig-Holstein, continues the series of internationally acclaimed black and white series: Hubert Fichte, The Trail of the Leopard, The Apocalyptic Menu, Trees of Heaven and All Inclusive.

A catalog will be published for the exhibition in the PHOTOGRAPHIA BOREALIS series of the Sparkassenstiftung Schleswig-Holstein.