Lukas Felzmann

Across Ground

“Across Ground” comprises two new books by the Swiss-born, San Francisco–based photographer Lukas Felzmann, who for nearly thirty years has been making poetic images that explore the intersection of nature and culture in California’s landscape. Developed in tandem between 2017 and 2024, the two volumes take us on an allusive journey through the Golden State’s fifty-eight counties, revealing seemingly liminal zones located in between cities, national parks and landmarks. Using a large format view camera, Felzmann follows the border of the continent to the edges of small towns to create a conceptual atlas of the Californian hinterland.

In “Across” Felzmann roams the territory freely, collecting signs of human activity in the natural environment, from foothills to felled cypress trees, in windows and reflections, across floodplains and focal planes. “Across” is not only a journey across land, but also across time and the process of photography, which Felzmann treats like a sculptural activity anchored by physical placement and the ultimate compression of space. In “Ground” this compression of space appears like a series of relief sculptures: monochrome records of topographical details brimming with beauty. Accompanied by poetic, geological reflections on each image by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander, these horizonless portrait images invite readers to immerse themselves in the here and now, rather than offer any promise of a final destination.

“Across Ground” comprises two new books by the Swiss-born, San Francisco–based photographer Lukas Felzmann, who for nearly thirty years has been making poetic images that explore the intersection of nature and culture in California’s landscape. Developed in tandem between 2017 and 2024, the two volumes take us on an allusive journey through the Golden State’s fifty-eight counties, revealing seemingly liminal zones located in between cities, national parks and landmarks. Using a large format view camera, Felzmann follows the border of the continent to the edges of small towns to create a conceptual atlas of the Californian hinterland.

In “Across” Felzmann roams the territory freely, collecting signs of human activity in the natural environment, from foothills to felled cypress trees, in windows and reflections, across floodplains and focal planes. “Across” is not only a journey across land, but also across time and the process of photography, which Felzmann treats like a sculptural activity anchored by physical placement and the ultimate compression of space. In “Ground” this compression of space appears like a series of relief sculptures: monochrome records of topographical details brimming with beauty. Accompanied by poetic, geological reflections on each image by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander, these horizonless portrait images invite readers to immerse themselves in the here and now, rather than offer any promise of a final destination.

Author(s): Lukas Felzmann

With contributions by Forrest Gander, Corey Keller

Design: Lukas Felzmann, Integral Lars Müller

20.3 x 30.5, 8 x 12

384 pages, 240 illustrations

2024, 978-3-03778-764-9, English
CHF 70.00
New

Lukas Felzmann

Lukas Felzmann (*1959) is an artist and educator. He was born and grew up in Zürich, Switzerland, and has been living and working in San Francisco since 1981 where he tought photography at the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University for two decades. He is now an affiliated scholar at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. Felzmann's work and installations contain sculptural elements, and through photographic means he explores the intersections of the natural and the cultural.