For those not familiar with his work, Nils is a professional photographer-artist hailing from France in the physical world, whose work is focused on landscapes, particularly those found within France’s numerous (and quite breath-taking) mountain ranges. In this, he covers everything from the magnificent and dramatic heights of the French Alps to the much lower (in terms to summit height, but no less impressive in scope and landscape) Jura and Vosges, the latter with their distinctive ballon summits, and Bugey.
Since 2007, Nils has brought many of these landscapes and scenes into Second Life, offering nigh-on 180 (at the time of writing!) exhibitions which serve as travelogues of his walks and hikes through the mountains and countryside of France. Within Autumn Lights, he presents a fall walk through the Vosges and (primarily, I think) the French Alps, capturing the golden richness of the foliage, the majesty of the snow-capped peaks beyond and the rugged beauty of the land and the homes people create within the valleys and among the hills.
These are images that bring home the full depth of Nils’ compositional skill. Within them we find greens, golds, browns and yellows set against skies so blue they stray towards cobalt and touched here and there with ribbons of cloud; or the yellow tides of trees flowing up the slopes of stonewashed hill to meet their zenith, the rocky slopes rolling back to where their rounded tops are backed by snowbound peaks at even greater heights; or the checkerboard of small fields sets within the golden march of firs, their boundaries marked by embankments and dry stone, the grass within them pale and sunwashed…
Each image offered through Autumn Lights has a story to tell; a story of the stately grace of these mountains, the formation of which started 300 million years ago and sharing something of an ancestry with the Himalayas, together (on a smaller scale) the people who populate them, which itself reminds us that humans inhabited these region as far back as the palaeolithic period.
But more than this, these images tell the story of a man in love with the country and landscapes in which he lives and travels; they form – as I’ve noted- a travelogue of his times within these mountains and their foothills, walking, hiking, exploring. As such they can be appreciated for the beauty they convey quite naturally and fully, whilst also inviting us into Nils’ life and allowing us to witness them through his eyes and thus share in his love for the places he records on camera.
A genuinely beautiful selection of images.
SLurl Details
- Kondor Art Club (Royal Tea, rated Adult)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 