The latest installment in Italian photographer Gustav Willeit’s ongoing landscape series, ‘Natu.Rae VIII’, features atmospheric images of expansive environments, devoid of any signs of life.
The images in this series were taken in various locations around Europe, all with vastly different landscapes. This includes South Tyrol, a province in northeast Italy with snow-capped mountain ,ranges; Grossarl, a small village in western Austria with close links into the Gastein valley; and the volcanic landscapes and beaches of the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of Africa. Willeit explains that the composition of each of his images is tripartite: the close-up draws in the viewer, expands their view, and then directs it towards the mountains or ominous sky in the background. “The atmosphere is bleak, dictated as it is by heavy and hefty clouds”, he says, “contrasting the traditional representation of several aspects typical of idyllic landscapes.” “The atmosphere is bleak, dictated by heavy and hefty clouds”
The overarching theme of Willeit’s work is the sublime, which he explains with a reference to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant: “The sublime according to Kant is the sense of awe that man feels when faced with the greatness of nature—when it shows its more “Our soul is capable of far more than peaceful side, but even more so when unleashing its dreadful forces, making each and every one of us feel our smallness, our extreme fragility, our finitude. Yet at the same time, right when becoming aware of that, we intuit the infinite and realize that our soul is capable of far more than our senses can grasp.”our senses can grasp”
All images © Gustav Willeit
