9th "Trilogy of Stone and Time".
Author: Klaus Merkel
Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Zurich 2013
This trilogy is a collective compilation of three photo albums by Klaus Merkel - "The Reading of Time in the Text of Nature" (2000), "Album of Stones" (2005) and "Trees like Stones"(2012). In this limited edition bound in a stiff wrapper, all books are numbered and signed by the author.
Unlike the German artist's multicolored abstract paintings, his photographs are exclusively black and white. Their common denominator is stone - in its natural form, but also as a basic building block that has been an integral part of architecture for centuries. Merkel shows surprising similarities between forms created by nature and those created by man. She also explores the dependence of the structure, texture and form of this material in relation to climatic and geographic conditions, but also shows the different phases of its aging process. It also highlights the important aspect of the use of almost exclusively local building materials in historical architecture - from antiquity to the Baroque.
The three books in the "Trilogy of Stone and Time" include photographs that Merkel took over thirty years during his numerous travels in the United States, Italy, Turkey, Burma and Namibia, among others. Each spread of this beautiful trilogy is a subjective response to the age-old dilemma of the composition and composition of single images on two adjacent pages. In Merkel's books, the grouped photographs in pairs engage in a unique dialogue with each other: history with modernity, light with shadow, architecture with nature.
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