BY GREGORY E. JONES
1. First off, tell us a little about yourself, and how you became involved with photography. Who are some of your influences?
«Photography has been a hobby of mine for many years. I got my first camera when I was about 10 years old and I experimented a lot with black and white film, spent many hours in the darkroom. But it was not until I was 23 when I decided to get seriously involved with photography, to go to art university and study it. When you start diving into this, you’re simply overwhelmed by the influences you get from all sides. I guess it was the German Becher school that impressed me the most, very early works from the 80s and 90s from people like Simone Nieweg, Axel Hütte and Petra Wunderlich. I should also mention Italian photographers Massimo Vitali and Walter Niedermayr, aswell as Jitka Hanzlová from the Czech Republic. All these artists were, among others, milestones on my way to an independent „photographic persona“, which can of course only be an asymptotic approach. The sum of all influences you get in your career will always remain visible in your work. As Swiss writer Max Frisch put it: „I don’t write, I’m being written.“»
2. Your body of work, “Vallées du Soleil” gives us a view of ski resorts that are settled within the mountains and valleys of the French Alps. Some time ago we interviewed Céline Clanet, who photographed hydroelectric systems within the Alps, and it’s nice to see with your work another aspect of this environment. Could you talk a little about this project, specifically what drew you to photograph these resorts?
«I’ve been drawn to alpine environments all my life, I was always fascinated by these landscapes. A couple of years ago I found a little ski guide book from the 1970s, and there were pictures of these huge modernist hotel buildings from the late 60s and early 70s in some French ski resorts. They looked so unreal, as if they were small architectural models photographed in a studio. So I knew I had to take a closer look. When I got there, I was amazed how urban space was used as a pattern and transferred into the wild almost unmodified. Apart from the things you would expect in such a place, like hotels, restaurants and bars, I also found churches, book shops, cinemas, banks, fashion stores et cetera. It was all there and created an almost frightening, surreal atmosphere».
3. The scenes you photographed are largely void of human activity, empty tennis courts and quiet streets. Is this simply because you photographed during an “off-peak” time period? Did you make a conscious effort to minimize the role of the figure within these landscapes? Or is there a more direct message you were looking to portray here?
«I decided to go there in summer because I was worried that all the snow, people, cars and decoration would draw too much attention away from the buildings and veil them in a way. The off-season dreariness though shows them in a perfect bareness, explicitness and bluntness, but also very quiet and deserted, just like a ghost town scenery. So yes, I tried to depict those places void of humans as far as possible, but I didn’t mind a couple of people standing around here and there».
4. When looking at these images I see a soft tension that’s created between the land and the modernist structures which occupy it. It occurs to me that these buildings could be offensive, and the architectural styling is somehow competing with the natural beauty of the Alps. Do you feel that these structures are somehow violating the land? Is this a bad thing that we are seeing? Or does our presence and efforts to transform this place somehow enrich the environment?
«It was definitely not my intention to make a moral statement here. I don’t know if human interventions in alpine (and any other) landscape are good or bad, or if concepts of a „gentle“ alpine tourism with small and expensive chalet-style buildings and villages are better than huge modernist palaces that offer cheap accomodation for thousands. Or if it would be best not to touch those regions at all and eliminate the economic basis for local people. I rather tried to create an observing, documenting body of work, a sort of visual sociology, trying to be as neutral as possible».
5. In another one of your projects, “Tame,” you show us images in which wildlife is on display, either referentially or in true flesh. In doing so, as in “Vallées du Soleil,” you offer a similar critique of man’s interventions within the natural world.. Do you find that this is a common thread throughout the work you do? If so, why do you find it important that we take notice?
«The relationship of man and nature could be considered as a leitmotif in almost all of my work up to this point. I’ve always been interested in how we get involved with our surroundings, with landscapes, with environments, how we design places and modify them to make them usable in one way or another. The settings of „Vallées du Soleil“ fascinated me because they are urban structures shifted into the wild, artificial urban places in high alpine regions that are hostile to life».
«With the series „Tame“, I tried to approach the topic in the opposite way: Where and to what extent do we find „artificial nature“ in urban space? And by artificial I not only mean the synthetic or imitated, but everything that has been constructed, altered, domesticated or instumentalized by humans. A pseudo-nature, if you will. Places like zoos, botanic gardens or parks».
«Apart from that, there are two main issues that I was interested in: First, the sociocultural construction of the dualism of man and nature, of culture and nature. The fact that we as humans consider ourselves to be something different, somehow standing out of the rest. And, second, how we try to re-establish a certain form of natural world in our new concrete, urban Lebenswelt. It is a nature that is tamed, euphemistic, not authentical, in a way the „lost paradise“ that we are trying to get back. All constructed realities, very selective simulations of nature».
6. Last but not least, What’s coming up for you in 2012, photographically or otherwise?
«As far as I can see now, man and nature will keep me busy for some time to come».
© All copyright remains with photographer Maximilian Haidacher