Florian maier aichen biography

Florian Maier-Aichen is a landscape photographer based in Cologne, Germany and Los Angeles, US. He uses a combination of traditional photographic techniques.
Florian Maier-Aichen was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1973.
Florian Maier-Aichen was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany.

•

F L A U N T

![FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN “UNTITLED” 2019. C-PRINT. 40 3/8 X 32 1/2 INCHES. © FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND BLUM & POE, LOS ANGELES / NEW YORK / TOKYO](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/62ee0bbe0c783a903ecc0ddb/6472b8313011acc0d6a0bcc1_FLAUNT-MAGAZINE-FLORIAN-MAIER-AICHEN-5.jpeg) FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN “UNTITLED” 2019. C-PRINT. 40 3/8 X 32 1/2 INCHES. © FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND BLUM & POE, LOS ANGELES / NEW YORK / TOKYO Düsseldorf and Los Angeles are a wide aways apart. Geographically, the 5,600 or so miles is no stone’s throw; civically, denizens of the Rhineland city actually revere their scenic waterfront, strolling on the Embankment Promenade, as opposed to the eschewed and sunbaked L.A. River, an abject case study in the short-sighted reimagining of American infrastructure during the mid- twentieth century. Meteorologically, the respective metro areas lay claim to vastly differing weather patterns; damp drizzle parkas versus golden hour linen. Image-making in these places, too, draws from their own distinct sources o

•

Welcome to your watchlist

He embraces difficult techniques, chooses equipment that produces accidents such as light leaks and double exposures, and uses computer enhancements to introduce imperfections and illogical elements into images that paradoxically “feel” visually right, though they are factually wrong. Often employing an elevated viewpoint (the objective but haunting “God’s-eye view” of aerial photography and satellite imaging), Maier-Aichen creates idealized, painterly landscapes that function like old postcards.

Interested in places where landscape and cityscape meet, he chooses locations and subjects from the American West and Europe—from his own neighborhoods to vistas of the natural world. Looking backwards for his influences, Maier-Aichen often reenacts or pays homage to the work of the pioneer photographers of the nineteenth century, sometimes even remaking their subject matter from their original standpoints. Always experimenting, he marries digital technologies with traditional processes and films (black-and-white, color, infrared, and tricolor), restoring and r

•

FLORIAN MAIER-AICHEN

— Existing imagery, eg. postcards and their vantage points are a great point of reference and I often use them when researching ‘new’ photographs – there is no point to start from scratch on a picture that has innumerous predecessors. More copies of a subject make it more valuable to me.

Which is easy for the Alps, as they have been photographed plenty from the early days on (think of the Bisson brothers, or Eduard Spelterini) and it lives on in its cheap brother, the post or travel card.

The sameness of these postcards, sort of the consensus on subject and vantage point might off-set the idea of originality; to me they validate and prove right the depicted scene, and are a reason to acutally take the photograph myself.

My kind of landscape photography is less expedition than reenactment. It is not about the landscape and spritual experience, nor about a pioneer vision. It is just about an ‘original’ picture of a worn-out genre that I hope to find and I am usually happy when I am back home from the adventure.

Snow has always