Beschreibung der Dolomiten / Description of the Dolomites, series of 49, inkjet prints on rice paper, 50.8 x 38.1 cm, 2015/2016

Photo #1 - 14

Description of the Dolomites is an archive of 49 photographs showing structures of erosion and incidentally fossils that I found in the rocks of the Dolomites. In these patterns I cannot help but see close similarities with human writing, a phenomenon that made me question the line we usually draw between culture and nature. Is the development of written culture, the signs and symbols that we use, as distinctively human as we think, or are our hands and brains steered by a more universal force or intelligence?
The patterns can be seen as manuscripts of the geological history of these mountains; the rocks containing autobiographical inscriptions about their own history. The German word 'Beschreibung' in the title has a double meaning: to physically write on something, and to theoretically write about something: A geological treatise about the Dolomites, written by erosion into the stone itself.