Poetry of Silence No. 568

Timeless image compositions of the Namib Desert from a bird's eye view. Since 2018, Liechtenstein photographer Roland Blum has been travelling to Southwest Africa on a recurring basis, directing his camera lens from a helicopter at the structures and shapes of the fascinating Namib Desert in Namibia. Blum travels mainly in the remote northern part of the Namib. It is there that the quiet poetry of his large-format photographs emerges. On the Atlantic coast, which borders the desert in the west, the cold Benguela current of the Atlantic meets the barren land. Almost every morning, dense fog settles over the desert here, caused by the rapid cooling of the sea air at night. Blum flies directly along the edge of the fog with his telephoto lens, and as he does so he is drawn deep into the breathtakingly archaic world of the Namib again and again. But before he climbs into the helicopter to photograph, he takes a lot of time to build up a relationship with the landscape. He does this with long walks, if possible mainly at night. During the day, he studies the different light conditions and how they change the appearance of the landscape.Blum's visual language is that of a light painter - and thus his work is pure photography in the most original sense of the word.