
Hinter den Bergen
- Publisher
- Steidl
- Year
- 2025
- ISBN
- 978-3-86930-737-4
- Specifications
- Hardback
21 x 18.5 cm
192 pages
120 images
German
Mountains, cows and traditional agricultural methods on the one hand; billboards, ski lodges and uninhibited dedication to leisure and pleasure on the other—all this contradiction and more the Alps have on offer. In Hinter den Bergen (“behind the Alps”) Lois Hechenblaikner shows how dramatically the Alps have changed over the last two generations. He juxtaposes his color photographs of today’s excesses with black-and-white images by agricultural engineer Armin Kniely (1907–98), confronting the viewer with two contrasting series separated by up to 60 years. The resulting ambiguity is often astounding: today it is no longer gentian that blooms in the Alps but mass tourism, and the cows are made of purple plastic; it is not bales of hay but golf trolleys that are pulled across the meadows. Hechenblaikner lays bare the transformation of an agricultural landscape into one of unapologetic recreation, and holds a mirror to our relationship with the environment.