Nature nominee

The photo project „the new grounds“ focusses on areas in the Lausitz in eastern Germany, which formerly have been coal mines. While still a huge amount of coal is being extracted in the Lausitz, depleted areas are getting new purposes. Lakes arise, induced through channels only built for this reason. A new landscape, designed by humans, for recreation and tourism is in development, while next door the excavators still work.
The personal experience of ambivalence between the fascinating uniqueness of these renatured landscapes and the shocking fact that huge areas have been destroyed and thousands of people had to leave there home villages for our lust for electricity is kept in aesthetical landscape photographies. Taken with a 4x5“ camera in a precise and concentrated manner, the ambition of these photographs is to let the viewer feel this ambivalence and to induce thinking of the consequences of our energy production and how the future may bring a change into a more ecological production of energy.

Alexander Kadow was born in 1985 in Hamburg Germany, where he lives and works. He studied photo design at Lette Verein Berlin and works as a freelance photographer since 2011. Since the topics in his documentary photo projects treat the relationship between nature and human kind and because of his interest in natural sciences he studied energy and environmental engineering at the TUHH (technical university Hamburg-Harburg) for two years from 2012-2014 until he focused on photography again. With a new point of view he started to research on environmental and historical topics. The photographs mostly taken with a 4x5“ camera concentrate on precise composition and contentual reference to the topic. Since 2015 he studies fine arts at the HfbK (University of Fine Arts) and since 2017 in the Masterclass of Ute Mahler und Ingo Taubhorn at the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin.