The work of Martin Effert represents landscape in a direct and instantaneous way. He doesn’t build up a dialogue by trying to carve out some new method but uses an existing technique, notably that of photography. His means of creating unique images is based on a concrete knowledge of photographic method and a careful selection of landscapes that he wishes to capture.
There are but few reproductions where the effects of human existence cannot be discerned. Whether this is of specific interest to the artists or just an inevitable consequence of the location within which he lives and works, is hard to say.
The artists is fascinated by nature at rest: that which does not seem to have been constructed by man. In this way we are presented by industrial areas and building sites at night or massive cloud formations above tiny villages. There are blown about bits of debris and whole cities seemingly engulfed in mist.
Through professional use of photographic techniques, (extremely lengthy shutter speeds), he creates photos in which familiar urban images gain interesting tonalities, in this way placing his work under a romantic branch. Deserted and neutral pieces of land we pass and ignore on a daily basis, are rendered significant and full of feeling.
There is something undeniably romantic about this work. We are challenged to look at these landscapes with the hallucinating gaze of a romantic poet whereby intensity of consciousness transforms even the most meagre of surroundings into something beautiful. Martin Effert uses the camera, an instrument that ‘does not lie’, in such a way as to create an alternate reality. He is able to make the most miserable everyday landscape speak to us as poetry, whilst at the same time eliciting undercurrents of tension that pose the question: ‘What has just happened here?’
