Lunar lens: Darren Almond’s nocturnal nature series

In Fullmoon, the conceptual meets the poetic: British artist Darren Almond catches natural archetypes and silent landscapes in night photographs made under a full moon, with the shutter kept open for over a quarter of an hour. The long exposure time illuminates the landscape almost like daybreak, but the atmosphere is different: a mild glow emanates even from the shadows, star-lines cross the sky, and water blankets the earth like a misty froth. The enhanced moonlight infuses the pictures with a haunting quality, casting the landscapes in a sense of the sublime and in a contemplation both of time, and of the preciousness of our natural surroundings.

This book collects roughly 260 images which Almond captured following the full moon around the globe. The whole series circles around the possibility of Romantic themes today: majestic American mountains, austere Arctic ice fields, picturesque rocks by the seashore in Japan, and, most intimately viewed, the nature of Britain, whose painterly subjects are closest to home. This book covers all parts of the series from the turn of the century up until today, with an introduction by Sheena Wagstaff, head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and an in-depth essay by writer and critic Brian Dillon.

Also available in three Art Editions, all numbered and signed by the artist.

Text in English, French, and German

The photographer:

Darren Almond was born in 1971 in Wigan, England. He is a conceptual artist whose work in photography, film and sculpture revolves around themes of personal memory, cultural history and time. His major solo exhibitions include shows at the ICA and the Tate Britain in London, Kunsthalle Zürich, K21 Düsseldorf, Museum Folkwang Essen, SITE Santa Fe, and Art Tower Mito in Japan.

The editor:

Hans Werner Holzwarth is a book designer and editor based in Berlin, with numerous publications mainly on contemporary art and photography. For TASCHEN he has edited, among other titles, Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Neo Rauch and Ai Weiwei.