AXEL HÜTTE

Hütteis a German artist born in 1951, living and working in Düsseldorf, Germany.

"Axel Hütte is pre-eminently a landscape photographer. In his oeuvre he has developed this theme into a superspecialism, in which very few can measure up to him. Loyal to objective observation and the overall readability of the photographic image, he has developed a concept of landscape observation in which many classical premises have been pushed aside. Axel Hütte does not, for instance, consistently employ the visual construction of a fore-, middle-, and background, nor is there a dominant horizon to emphasize the spatiality of the image. The moments designated by classical landscape art as being sublime, such as the sunrise and the sunset, beautiful expanses of sky and other indicators of mood, are also avoided by him. Without a foreground, not only the potential reference to the standpoint of the photographer—and thereby that of the viewer as well—is gone. Also the visual gauge with respect to the spatiality of the landscape is exchanged for a more dynamic and more democratic concept."

 —Els Barents, from The Democratic Landscape of Axel Hütte in the exhibition catalogue As Dark as Light, Huis Marseille Amsterdam, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich 2001.