“The American people live on the road,” Paris, Texas actor Harry Dean Stanton has said regarding the making of the 1984 film. “The society is on the road.” The road has been a subject of director Wim Wenders’ ‘70s-era films: Alice in the Cities, The Wrong Move, and Kings of the Road. In Wenders’ work, the road is a conduit that allows us to span memory and time — and his players choose to embrace or evade the journey.
The desolate landscape is also a part of Wenders’ photographic work, which is the subject of a new exhibition at Blain|Southern Berlin, from September 17 through November 14. Time Capsules. By the side of the road. “alludes to the relationship between memory and photography, highlighting the ability of photographs to act as a medium that captures an essence of the past and preserves it for the future,” the gallery explains. The recent photographs were captured in Germany and America, the most influential countries of Wenders’ career.
“I see myself as an interpreter, as a translator, a guardian […] of stories that places tell me,” Wenders says of the images. “I think I had wide-open eyes for America, and ‘the American landscape’ in a general sense seemed extremely attractive to me, both as a photographer and filmmaker. Maybe the long absence from Germany of 15 years has enabled me to see places here with the same wide-open eyes. What has remained the same: in those landscapes, German or American, I’m still looking for the traces of civilization, of history, or people.”
See a preview of Time Capsules. By the side of the road. in our gallery.
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Contemplation, Denver, Colorado, 1982
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Drive-in at night, Montréal, Canada, 2013
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Drive-in, Marfa, Texas, 1983
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Dusk in Coober Pedy, 1978
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Forest in Brandenburg, 2014
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Four Drive-in Screens, Montréal, Canada, 2013
Potsdamer Platz, 1995
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Roller Coaster, Montréal, Canada, 2013
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
The Elbe River near Dömitz, 2014
Image Courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern
Western World Development, Near Four Corners, California, 1986