Italian collection

Born and raised in Bolzano, Walter Niedermayr began in the early 1980s to focus his attention on the Alpine landscape,observing and documenting the consequences of the advance of mass tourism and industrialization on the Alpine environment.

At the same time, he researches the act of the photographic gaze itself, and specifically its limits, which he investigates systematically and pushes by creating composite images. His works are polyptychs in which the margins between adjacent photographs include repeated or overlapping portions. Despite their monumental proportions, still his works undergo a reduction process that involves both colour and form. Underexposure and desaturation of the photographic surfaces bring to light essential elements that are normally hidden in darkness. Around these elements, an enigmatic, luminous void is created, which each viewer can fill according to their own observations.

All of Niedermayr’s work is marked by a very subtle balance between the concrete evidence and the illusion of the representation: from his recent mountain photographs, such as St. Anton am Arlberg 04, Glacier des Bossons 02, and Aspen 98 (2009), to those exploring perception of architectural space in the Raumfolgen (1991–2010), Artefacte (1992–), Rohbauten (1997–) and Bildraum (2000–2010) series, up to the work carried out in Iran in 2005–08. The Iranian series, that includes Yazd, Iran 37 (2005) and Shiraz, Iran 124 (2006) explores a land whose history goes back millennia, where traces of ancient Persia can be found alongside those of industrialization, Western influence
and the Islamic revolution. Through the fragmentation and continuous shifts characterizing all of his work, Niedermayr seems to outline possible connections between past and present, placing us once again before the evidence of the visible and the illusion of the vision.