Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong, Tree and Soil. Cet article n’est pas disponible.Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong, Tree and Soil

Déjà auteurs de la série Poppy Trails, où ils suivaient le circuit de l'héroïne à partir d'Afghanistan, Robert Knoth et Antoinette de Jong se livrent ici à une exploration de la zone sinistrée par la catastrophe nucléaire de Fukushima en 2011. Pour cela, ils font une sélection dans les archives conservées aux Pays-Bas de Philipp Franz von Siebold, un naturaliste qui a exploré la région au XIXe siècle et rassemblé des spécimens de plantes et d'insectes accompagnés de gravures réalisées sous sa direction par Kawahara Keiga. Les deux photographes présentent ces archives historiques mises en regard de leurs propres images contemporaines sur les paysages de la région, dans un travail de correspondances à la fois visuelles et documentaires.

Eight years after their by now legendary publication ‚Poppy – Trails of Afghan Heroin’, Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong finished their next long-term project ‘Tree and Soil’. After the nuclear disaster in 2011, they have photographed and filmed the changing landscapes in the closed zones around Fukushima over a period of five years. They documented evacuated farmhouses, gardens, agricultural fields and the surrounding hills and forests and interviewed former inhabitants of the area. For this book they combine their own landscape photography with historical material from naturalist and explorer von Philipp Franz von Siebold’s collection. In the early 19th century Siebold had the opportunity to travel throughout the country and to take home not only vast quantities of artefacts, plant and animal specimens but also a treasure throve of woodblock prints made by artists like Kawahara Keiga. Siebold’s collections –-held in the Netherlands by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden – illustrate how Japanese culture is deeply rooted in and inspired by nature. He perfectly represents the Age of Exploration in which explorers travelled the globe to uncover the secrets of the natural world. This era can be seen as a prequel to the anthropocene, in which our planet has been profoundly changed by human activity. In ‘Tree and Soil’ Knoth and de Jong underline the intrinsic beauty and value of nature, connecting the past and present by documenting and interpreting the transformations of the deserted landscapes around Fukushima.

Exhibitions:
March – May 2021: Museum Kulturspeicher, Würzburg,
Museum Hundertwasser/Kunsthaus Wien, Vienna,
May – August 2021: Foto Museum, The Hague