Wout Berger

With his 'Giflandschap' (Poisoned Landscape) series Dutchman Wout Berger made a name for himself with photographs of polluted landscapes in the Netherlands. He set out to capture the subject as neutrally as possible with the technical camera. In most cases there is no sign of pollution in his unemotional photographic records; rather they raise the question of where it actually is. Unlike the almost clichéd images of pollution we see every day, Berger chose a detached, sometimes totally aesthetic way of photographing his subject. Consequently, these photographs do not always directly divulge their meaning, which on closer inspection makes them all the more disturbing.
In his photographs Wout Berger tries to reproduce the outskirts as exactly as possible. He strives for transparency and, as he himself says, he wants to “make things manifest by means of a clear photographic approach”.