Gartenzaun mit Teppich, Gelsenkirchen 2003 © Simone Nieweg
Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop Im Stadtgarten, 20 46236 Bottrop Allemagne
Simone Nieweg is a photographer of gardens and landscapes. Her work, as it has manifested itself over the past thirty years, knows no other interest. At the same time, a certain serenity hovers over her pictures. In them, nature seems entirely focused on itself. One immediately notices that human beings are absent. The allure of colors and shapes, the shifting complexion of the soil, and the refractions of light at various times of year – these things portray nature as a sensual reservoir that is inexhaustible and unneedful of man and his senses.
Nature, as it appears in the images, still possesses a unique intimacy. When nature is worked with simple, hand-held tools, the traces of man’s labor take on a special immediacy. Plants bear witness to their careful cultivation; they are not part of an anonymous agricultural blueprint. Nature bears the marks of man’s presence without losing its own identity. In fact, a genuine symbiosis of man and nature takes place. It is for this reason that nature often appears to be direct extension of man’s domestic sphere in these photographs, a shift of living space toward the outdoors, as it were.