Wim Wenders is a German image maker – a film producer, director, writer and photographer whose art formed a part of the New Wave in German cinema from the 1960s onwards. Some of Wenders’ more famous works include the film ‘Paris, Texas’ and ‘Wings of Desire’, both profound films that explore human relationships, tensions and involve a strong sense of spatial belonging – the idea of ‘place’ and connection with land and cities.
For Yohji Yamamoto’s A#2, a series of Wim Wender’s photography deals with the Grand Canyon, in Arizona, USA. Instead of a conventional focus on the sweeping, dramatic landscape, Wenders uses it as a backdrop to record the insignificant and idiosyncratic behaviours of the tourists who visit there – their sneakers and snapshot cameras, their motorbikes, campervans and 4WDs. In Wenders words:
“In all these tourist places
where people are expected to take pictures,
I can only take pictures of these people.
There is something very dramatic
about the longevity of these landscapes
and the short lives of these people
even if they try to prolong it
with the photographs they take.
Well I guess that goes for me, too.
Then again, I’m not a tourist.I’m a traveller.”
- Wim Wenders
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