Kanarische Landschaften I - c

The Kanarische Landschaften series – two portfolios of photographic prints made from Richter's own photographs of the Canary Islands – occupies a considered position within his output. Where his Photo Paintings take found photographic images and subject them to the painted, blurred surface, these works remain photographs: unmanipulated, formally modest, and direct in their means. Each print is mounted small at the centre of a large cream-white sheet, bordered by a fine pencil line – a presentation that elevates the photographic image without dramatising it.

In Kanarische Landschaften I – c, the warm register of Series I is fully present. The volcanic earth carries a reddish-ochre warmth – Canary Islands soil catching low, diffuse light – while the flat-topped mesa of the middle ground rises sharply against the cloud cover above. The sky takes up the greater part of the composition, heavy with cumulus and darkening towards the upper edge. It is a landscape simultaneously arid and atmospheric: ancient geology under restless weather.

Made in 1971, the Kanarische Landschaften series was produced when photography was becoming, for Richter, not merely a source for painting but a subject in its own right. His photographs consistently resist the picturesque: the Canary Islands landscape is not conventionally beautiful, and that non-conventionality is part of the point.