Renate Aller

"Shot outdoors under conditions dictated by her huge, primitive, volatile subject, the Atlantic Ocean, they are a record of open water as it acts like a giant mirror; reflecting what is happening that second in the sky. They are not her staged inventions but instead represent a more or less faithful record of what she saw as she waited daily and hourly in the hope that something she found dazzling or strange would appear in the viewfinder of her camera.
"And yet, each of these image--from a series that has spanned ten years--was taken in the same place, from the back of the beach house this German-born artist shares with her husband on the southern shore of Long Island, New York. Like a studio photographer, she has severely restricted her formal vocabulary, choosing to vary only the placement of the horizon lines in the frame. The mighty unpredictability of the ocean has been domesticated, its windswept vastness continuously tamed by the rules she has set herself in making art."
Richard B. Woodward, excerpted from A Mirror on which to Dwell in Oceanscapes.

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Renate Aller: Oceanscapes Text by Richard B. Woodward, Jasmin Seck, Dr. Petra Roettig. German-born photographer Renate Aller has been photographing the Atlantic Ocean for over a decade, from a single point on Long Island’s fabled coastline. Her images capture the shifting colors and textures
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RADIUS BOOKS
ISBN: 9781934435236
$50.00 | Awaiting stock

Renate Aller

Renate Aller: Oceanscapes

One View. Ten Years.

Text by Richard B. Woodward, Jasmin Seck, Dr. Petra Roettig.
Published by Radius Books

German-born photographer Renate Aller has been photographing the Atlantic Ocean for over a decade, from a single point on Long Island’s fabled coastline. Her images capture the shifting colors and textures of the sky and water, and the beauty and grandeur of the ocean, providing a rich document of what has made the Hamptons such an integral aspect of New York life. The sublime beauty of this Atlantic view, which Aller connects to the great nineteenth-century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, also invokes metaphors for the landscapes of human emotions. Aller’s viewpoint is static, but the changing weather and light allow for a diverse series of images that invite a plethora of associations. Essays place Aller’s work both in the context of landscape photography and the history of images of the Hamptons.