Artist: Neil FolbergTitle: Fig TreeGallery: Vision GalleryYear: 2000
Media: PhotographyDimension: 24" x 20"
Price: $1,800 $ £ €
DARKNESS VISIBLE by Michael Kimmelman
American photographer Neil Folberg brings the heavens down to earth in an astonishing new book
Like his teacher Ansel Adams, the American photographer Neil Folberg is an evangelist of nature. Neither can you miss Folberg's reverence for the natural world around him.
In his latest book, CELESTIAL NIGHTS (Aperture). it's the deserts of Israel and the Sinai, beneath improbable skies: the remains of a fifth century synagogue whose thrusting silhouette is uncannily mimicked by the constellation overhead, the ruins and stars in heavenly concord; and a night scene of planted tress in the Negev, an Israeli oasis in the desert under a billion lights.
But wonderment is the ultimate subject of these photographs: separate exposures of landscape and sky digitally stitched together. As computer concoctions, they share a technique with the fashionable photographs of art stars like Andreas Gursky, for whom amazement is also the expected response and digital magic is part of the basic arsenal of the medium. Lest we forget, Adams, too, despite being the classic straightforward photographer, was a wizard with filters and tinkered with his prints. Photography, it turns out, has never really been about the truth; in the end, it has always been about awe.
In Folberg's case, it is about a little of both. The awe derives from the mysterious effect of bringing the heavens near while making the earth look otherworldly - precisely the feeling you have while standing in a faraway landscape under a full sky at night. It is the feeling of being dumbstruck by the immensity of it all.