Michael Lange

For six years Michael Lange made extensive journeys to various regions of the French Alps searching for solitude and silence. He followed the idea that the decisive moment - the moment of perfect harmony between nature, landscape, and the photographer - exists in landscape photography and is even a particular feature of the genre. High up in the mountains he created a collection of impressive meditative images, between light and dark, silence and storm. Often he had to wait for days, sometimes for weeks, high up in the mountains. The fifty-two images in the book combine the quiet majesty of the mountain landscapes with fleeting moments of the perception of nature. Michael Lange deals with the question of how we perceive what we see and how we can find new ways to express our feelings in pictures. The title Cold Mountain refers to the legendary Zen monk, poet and recluse Hanshan (“Cold Mountain”) from seventh century China. The selection of poems reflecting the solitude of the mountains and human soul states is taken from four famous Zen hermits - Hanshan, Ikkyu, Basho, and Ryokan - from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries in China and Japan. The poems connect the groups of pictures. They set the tone and determine the atmosphere of the book and the pictures and reflect the author's long relationship to Zen Buddhism.