Simone Nieweg

Simone Nieweg is another Becherite out of the Dusseldorf School - part of the second generation after Struth and Gursky and friends. And while you can certainly see the influence of that whole group, she also displays a certain individuality.

I'm not quite sure why I like photography of these sort of gardens and allotments and market gardens and so on (as my wife will quickly tell you, I'm the most useless kind of gardener...). I suppose some of these places aren't so different from what surrounded me growing up in England. And although I lived in Germany for a couple of years, somehow I don't seem to remember the summers much - more autumn, winter and early spring. (also, Autumn was exercise season for NATO, so we spent a lot of time out on German farmland training to keep the red menace at bay)



From one exhibition statement (btw, I think artists from many other countries would kill for the level of support the Goethe Institute gives to their homegrown artists...):

"Simone Nieweg belongs to the second generation of Becher students at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Unlike her forerunners, who won international acclaim with themes such as portraiture, architecture and interiors, she has chosen a subject so unspectacular as to seem almost parochial.Her work focuses on the suburban fields and allotments that are to be found in the populated and industrialised areas in the Ruhr and Lower Rhine regions of Germany.

Devoid of human presence, these quietly beautiful colour photographs nonetheless attest to the profound human intervention in those seemingly unremarkable landscapes on the outskirts of the cities. Nieweg's images are carefully balanced compositions which radiate a sense of precise perception and pure description. At the same time, her pictures are imbued with a subtle sensuousness."