German photographer Axel Hütte (born 1951), trained as part of the Düsseldorf School, travels around the world to find photographic subjects which allow him to explore the nature of perception. He has found his subjects in the metropolises of Las Vegas, New York, Tokyo and London, on Alpine glaciers and in the South American jungle. The resulting photographs feature unusual image structures and perceptional phenomena that surprise the viewer, straining the category of documentary photography. The manifestly real is suffused with an air of mystery and unreality in Hütte’s dimly lit landscapes, illuminated cities photographed with long exposures and scenes that blur the boundaries between architecture and landscape.
Night and Day presents around 80 large-format nocturnal and daytime pictures made between 1995 and 2017, including previously unpublished photographs taken in North America, alongside a selection of early works made before 1995.
Published by Skira. Edited by Filippo Maggia, Claudia Fini.
A collection of previously unreleased photographs by the German artist shot over the past three years, from Venice to the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. A photographer of the so-called Düsseldorf School, Axel Hutte trained under Bernd Becher with Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Candida Hofer, and Andreas Gursky. This volume presents two series of photographs. The first illustrates the author’s journey from Germany to Italy, a sort of retracing of the nineteenth-century Grand Tour: from Alpine passes surrounded by snowy summits to Apennine peaks. The second explores Venice and the interiors of some of its best-known palazzi through color and black-and-white photographs.
Filippo Maggia is currently researcher at the Photography Department of the Royal College of Art, London. Since 2010, he has taught Photographic Documentation at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Catania (Sicily).
Published by Holzwarth Publications. Photographs by Axel Hütte.
Forests full of mystery, gardens that remain aloof from outside gazes, mountains whose fog-shrouded summits are hidden in a thick veil--the views of nature that Axel Htte captures in these photographs are vividly animate and seductive, but ultimately allow nature to remain sovereign and at a distance. Panoramas of awesome beauty absorb the gaze and simultaneously put it in its place--nature remains intact and impenetrable.
Published by Richter Verlag. Essays by Guido De Werd and Roland Monig.
German photographer Axel Hütte has developed in recent years a singular approach to his photographic compositions. Hütte's remarkably rich landscapes, flora, waterfalls and bridges are all depicted with his signature elements: each focuses on a single motif of sky, water, or plant, which takes up the entire image, its position as sole element suggesting a continuation out of the frame. Geometric composition is also a central theme, as Hütte finds and represents the lines, circles and repetitive shapes that exist in nature. The 24 photographs reproduced in Fecit were taken during his travels through Europe, South America and Australia, and record a remarkable diversity of landscapes. They alternate between a poetic peacefulness and a darker, edgier ambience, but all reflect Hütte's unique approach. The title Fecit, a Latin word meaning "he makes," was chosen by Hütte to suggest the artist's role in photography: the landscapes he shoots are there, but the various compositional elements that lead to the final result are the work of the individual, and there are an infinite number of choices for any particular subject.
Axel Hutte
Axel Hütte: Secret Garden, Misty Mountain
Axel Hütte: Fecit