HAVELLAND. FONTANE

Bernhard Sallmann transforms the historical line that Theodor Fontane draws in the third volume of his “Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg” (“Ramblings through Brandenburg”) into visual poetry: sunset sky and dawn, vast fields and meadows, cloud formations, trees in all their variety, birds and over and over again water, light and the seasons. Humans travelled this landscape and left behind paths, bridges, water locks, churches and monasteries, chimneys and ruins left behind by the industrial age. The latter also repeatedly features in the soundtrack, for example, when the noise of an aeroplane cuts through the calm. The idyll is fragile, or, in Fontane’s words, its other side is all the darker. In Fontane and Sallmann, two masters with a keen eye for detail have perfectly found common ground. GL