Florian Maier-Aichen

German photographer Florian Maier-Aichen (born 1973) recontextualizes the Romantic Sublime of Caspar David Friedrich to account for our contemporary sense of what sublimity in landscape might be, using a fascinating and unusual combination of traditional photographic techniques and computer imaging. This monograph offers an introduction to Maier-Aichen's restless search for the Sublime, in recent images of the Californian coast and other landscapes, where swooping, serene, black-and-white aerial shots of mountainous regions sit alongside digital manipulations that add intense, hallucinatory color to natural effects. These photographs were first shown at PHotoEspaña 2008 in Madrid, and are published here for the first time. Maier-Aichen's works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum and the Saatchi Collection, and his first solo exhibit was at MoCA LA. With essays by curator Sérgio Mah and critic Christy Lange.

Florian Maier-Aichen's photographs portray the natural, industrial and cultural landscape with stylized eccentricity. By using the tropes of documentary photography in unconventional ways, Maier-Aichen creates sublime images rich with reference and allusion. His photographs of the California coast, the Alps and other tourist destinations are openly beautiful and seductive in their rich hues and expansive viewpoints. However, these and other images of melting cathedrals, failed industry and tragic ghost ships are nuanced with a subtle disquiet and ensuing criticality. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, and educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, Maier-Aichen begins with a traditional large-format image that he captures on film. He then applies a myriad of creative adjustments to each component that become building blocks for intricate and layered compositions. This succinct paperback contains color reproductions of new and recent works, documentary images of Maier-Aichen's process, and an essay by MOCA curator Rebecca Morse.