Strynefjiellet IV, 2002, c-print, 6 panels 84 x 104 cm each, installation 170 x 316 cm


The Suzy Shammah gallery presents a selection of recent and new works by the photographer Walter Niedermayr. At the beginning of his career Niedermayr focuses on the alpine territory around Bolzano, in the Alto-Adige region of Italy, on the confines of Germany, where the artist was born and continues to work. A cultural as well as geographic frontier, the area has a profound influence on Niedermayr, which is reflected in his original way of interpreting the landscape by combining photography and painting.

Using small movements of the lens, Niedermayr achieves viewpoints composed of sequential and discontinuous shots, whose margins overlap. This method results in a panoramic vision that is paradoxically fragmented, and space appears to be broadened. The concentration of visual data is abandoned in favor of a dynamic conception of the perceptive process in which the spectator is asked to use a subjective reading of the landscape.

Niedermayr's works contain a dialogue between a pictorial vision and photographic approach as well as a continual return to the tradition of the romantic movement (C.D. Friedrich) and the New Objectivity (August Sanders, Albert Rengen-Patzsch). The photographs exude the locations' intense expressiveness, examine the concept of space and invite the viewer to examine man's capacity to orient himself within the constant mutation of landscape. 

Krafla I, 2003, c-print, 2 panels 131 x 104 cm each, installation 131 x 210 cm

Le Point Trifide I, 1999, c-print, 2 panels 54 x 68 cm each, installation 54 x 138 cm

Neuseeland III, 2004, c-print, 2 panels 84 x 104 cm each, installation 84 x 211 cm

Raumfolgen 124, 2004, c-print, 2 panels 68 x 54 cm each, installation 68 x 110 cm