HUMAN, NATUREk! is an ongoing photographic project exploring how we perceive the human being in relation to the natural world.
Across portraiture, landscape, and personal narratives, the project examines the boundaries between the human and the natural, and the ideas we project onto both.
Nature is not simply a setting. It becomes a space through which identity, memory, vulnerability, belonging, and perception are revealed.
The project unfolds through distinct photographic series, each approaching the relationship between human beings and nature from a different perspective.
SERIES I — FLORA OBSCURA
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FLORA OBSCURA is a photographic portrait series within the ongoing project HUMAN, NATURE!.
The series has its origin in a personal childhood memory: my grandfather's garden, which he created in retirement, after a long working life shaped by war and captivity, and tended for decades. A self-made place of order and beauty, grown out of a life in which so much could not be controlled. From this experience, I ask what people seek, preserve, or suppress in their own relationship to nature.
The series brings real people into dialogue with plants. For some of the portrayed, the botanical choice stems from a shared memory, a specific place, or a moment in their biography. The plants alter, obscure, and extend the appearance of the figure. They protect by concealing, and reveal precisely what they seek to conceal.
Each portrait is accompanied by an original quote from a personal conversation with the portrayed individual. Not every connection between person and plant is fully explained. Some of it remains deliberately hidden, flora obscura in the literal sense.
01 EMEL AYDOĞDU: “My first experience of nature was my grandmother's garden. There were pomegranates, figs, apples, and grapes, and the most beautiful flower in the meadow was the bright red poppy. Without her care, the fruit there would never have grown so abundantly."
02 VEIT ALEX: “Nature has always been a place of retreat and safety for me. In my youth, when I struggled with bullying, I found peace in the forests around my boarding school. While others might have felt lonely, I was able to find distance, and ultimately, myself.”
03 ANDREAS LANGE: “As a child, I spent a lot of time outdoors, often in the nearby forest climbing trees or playing hide and seek. The tall trees always had something powerful about them. They gave me a sense of protection and security.”
04 YULIA YÁÑEZ SCHMIDT: “I recently found a beautiful bench. From there, with my head leaned back, I could look straight into a blooming cherry tree, soft white petals falling above me, surrounded by bees and insects. Beautiful. A bit like a film scene, but real.”
05 PETRA EMMA: “My first experiences of nature were in my grandparents' gardens in Hesse, and my fondness for currants and gooseberries has stayed with me ever since. My father once wrote in my autograph book: A tree with deep roots does not fear the wind. That saying has stayed with me throughout my life and gives me something to hold on to."
06 FREIGEFYHL: “In nature, I can recharge my batteries and escape from the sometimes overly vibrant everyday life. Moreover, I draw a lot of inspiration for my compositions from nature. In the forest, the air is fresher, and the soundscape is more pleasant than in the city. A walk in the woods is always beneficial.”
07 SARAH KNAPPIK: “Planting trees is something very special to me. It’s a beautiful feeling to see something grow that will remain on Earth longer than oneself. I love giving something back to nature, because I love it, and it gives me strength.”
08 MASSIMO BUONERBA: “The often unrecognized beauty of nature unleashes my curiosity and drives me to explore, protect, and share the diversity of this world.”
09 ANUSCH KHANSAI-KOZIOROWSKI: “As a child, I was fascinated by how you could peel bark off birch trees, how chestnuts would simply fall from high above, and how leaves would change color as if by magic. I remember very clearly jumping into big puddles, even though I was otherwise a very tidy child. But puddles and mud, that was allowed."
10 DUYGU OGUR: “I enjoy being in nature. When I walk into the forest, I feel seen — the ground, every living being, and even the air I share with them become one with me.”
11 OLIVER SCHÄFER: “Three years ago, we lost very large areas of forest near my hometown within a very short time. Witnessing that loss reinforced my commitment to living more consciously with the environment."
12 MARTINA MACKOWSKI: “My first conscious experience of nature was walking along the dikes of the Polish riverbanks with my grandparents. As children, we played hide and seek in tall grass and let ourselves fall into the soft hollows it made."
13 MARK HOFFMANN: “When I try to remember a childhood experience with nature, I honestly can’t think of one. I’m a complete city kid. I grew up in Cologne. There simply wasn’t one. The first time I really felt a connection with nature was when I was 29, snorkeling in the Maldives, surrounded by so many fish that weren’t afraid of me at all."
14 PAULA DOBRINSKI: “We used to have a lot of hedges with reddish leaves in our neighborhood. I often plucked off leaves and used them as confetti, sometimes I even ate one. In summer, daisy chains and dandelion clocks were the thing. There were also large chestnut trees, but by now almost all the trees and meadows there have been removed for parking lots."
15 FLORIAN ADELON: “Growing up in the mountains, nature shaped me early on. It taught me patience and attention, and sharpened my eye for detail. Even today, hikes quickly turn into a focus on floral forms, organic structures, and subtle irregularities. My sense for nuance, color, and transitions comes from what nature creates without intention, and it continually finds its way into my work as a designer.”
16 MICHAELA SCHENUIT: “As a child, I always waited for the cherry blossoms in front of our house. For me, that was the beginning of spring. We often played under the tree and decorated each other with the blossoms. The tree isn't there anymore, but when I think of it, it becomes quiet enough again, for a moment, to hear myself.”
17 ANGELICA NEUROHR: “As a child, I drifted out to sea on an air mattress off the North Sea coast, right into a swarm of jellyfish. My father had to come and get me. I was stung by a jellyfish, developed a rash and had to stay in bed. Years later, while diving off Mauritius, I felt a genuine fear of death. I couldn’t breathe and had to surface immediately. Since then, I’ve known that my admiration for nature always comes with a kind of respect, sometimes even fear. In the palace park, teenagers set fire to a tree years ago, and yet something still grows back from its sides. It becomes clearer to me all the time: nature lives on without us. But we don’t live on without it.”
SERIES II — EARTHBOUND
The human figure enters the landscape and becomes part of it, sometimes visible, sometimes almost disappearing.
Without clothing and its familiar social markers, the body appears timeless. In the moment of making these images, it can feel like a return to something elemental, to nature itself.
Yet every viewer meets this body through their own history. Culture, desire, memory, and learned ways of seeing shape what is recognized as natural, and what is not.
EARTHBOUND holds both of these truths at once: the felt sense of an unmediated return, and the certainty that no gaze, including the photographer's own, arrives without history.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Andrea Wulf — The Invention of Nature
Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass
John Berger — Ways of Seeing
Peter Wohlleben — The Hidden Life of Trees