Klaus Merkel

The Reading of Time in the Text of Nature

Images and Insights

Klaus Merkel’s coupled photographs mirror the physical and spiritual patterns of both natural and architectural structures. They demonstrate fundamental and universal formal laws in their compelling revelation of inseparably intertwined nature and culture. The pictures are grouped according to such themes as stratification, crystallization, the vegetable world, and inside/outside.

Part of the Trilogy of Stone and Time

Author(s): Klaus Merkel

Foreword by Kurt W. Forster
With photographs by Klaus Merkel

24 x 30 cm, 9 ½ x 11 ¾ in
96 pages, 84 illustrations
hardback

2000, 978-3-907044-97-1, English

Klaus Merkel (*1940) is a German photographer and author. He studied art history and archaeology at the University of Munich and painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin before devoting himself entirely to his passion: photographing stones. Merkel traveled the world for his photographs of rock formations, cemeteries, places of worship, old tree trunks and landscapes that look as if they have been petrified. His main artistic work is represented in the illustrated books "Reading Time in the Text of Nature" (1997), "Album of Stones" (2005) and "Trees like Stones" (2013), which are also available as a signed, limited "Trilogy of Stone and Time" edition (Lars Müller Publishers, 2013).