Witho Worms “Cette Montagne C’est Moi & A Forest Reconstructed”

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

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L. Parker Stephenson Photographs presents an exhibition of two complimentary series by Dutch artist Witho Worms (b. 1959). Worms’ interest lies in the relationship between nature and culture. He employs the camera to examine typologies across Europe where the two intersect in the landscape. Contact prints of recurring forms are made using pigments selected to embody the objects themselves. The results are detailed, subtle, and sublime.

In Cette montagne c’est moi (This mountain that’s me), Worms photographed slag heaps leftover from coal mining. The triangular mounds lie in various stages of reclamation. Historical remnants of an eclipsed industrial economy, they have been recycled and have developed ecologies of their own. Each 20 inch panoramic contact print is made using the coal - painstakingly ground to a fine pigment - from its location, with subject and object becoming one. The choice of carbon printing, a laborious undertaking, is exceptionally well-suited for revealing exquisite detail, wide tonal range and nuanced hues as well as being one of the most stable photographic processes.

The more recent series, A Forest Reconstructed, presents the cross-sectioned patterns of reforestation. Planted for commercial purposes to produce paper and lumber, trees grow in arrangements that are neither randomly organic nor solely artificial. Concerned with how to appropriately represent this stratified reality Worms resolves, quite literally, to make an impression of these vertical rhythmic lines by printing in white on a white support. Contact prints of titanium powder on single weight baryta paper pose the question as to what is seen and what is imagined.

A cultural anthropologist by training and a technician by nature, Worms draws upon diverse methodologies to create photographs that link the phenomenon of the altered landscape to the finished print. Through a conceptual and aesthetic lens and a scientific approach, each step is examined, questioned, investigated, tested and harmoniously resolved.

Worms’ photographs are in the permanent collections of institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Washington (NGA); the New York Public Library (NYPL); Yale University Art Gallery; Fries Museum, Netherlands; Museum de Paviljoens, Netherlands; Bayerische Staatliche Sammlung, Germany; and Musée de la Photographie Charleroi, Belgium. Photographs from Cette montagne c’est moi were exhibited earlier this year at NYPL, at the NGA in 2015 and at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam the previous year. His long out-of-print book of the same name (published 2012) has won numerous accolades and is highly sought after by collectors. FOAM Magazine’s current issue #49 Back to the Future features Worms’ work.