Inside Out - White Mountains, Dragon, 2022 © Courtesy the Artist

Inside Out - White Mountains, Dragon, 2022 © Courtesy the Artist

Inside Out - White Mountains, Dragon, 2022 © Courtesy the Artist

The black markings that criss-cross the ancient wood of the pine trees are proof that time and probability are relative terms: every tree here has been struck by lightning at least once in its lifetime. In terms of human lifetimes or even photographic exposure times, this is almost unimaginable. 
- Daniel Blochwitz

Since 2018, Bernd Nicolaisen has been coming to Factum Arte with a number of challenges that required creative printing solutions to bring materiality to his photographic images. The solutions have included giving surface and form to the frozen water of Iceland’s glaciers (Restlicht), visualising meteors in deep space (Head of 67P and Chury out of Horizon), re-presenting the layering of rocks that are over two billion years old (Strata of Pilbara) and now introducing a new body of poetic transformations of a living Bristlecone pine that is over 4500 years old.

A series 8 x10 inch black and white negatives taken in a remote area of Sierra Nevada using a plate camera have been transformed in ways that celebrate the fossil-like qualities of the living wood in which presence and absence co-exist.

More than ten years have passed since the trees were captured on film. At Factum Arte, Bernd’s negatives were printed in layers onto gesso panels or transformed into depth maps that were CNC-milled into alabaster, giving depth and surface to the time-worn material that has been resisting the forces of nature. The inverted tonal values of the prints now suffuse each piece with an inner light, enhancing their patterns from within.

Rythm of the Heart © Courtesy the Artist

Haze © Courtesy the Artist

Inside Out © Courtesy the Artist

Burgeon © Courtesy the Artist

Connections © Courtesy the Artist

Dragon © Courtesy the Artist

Storm © Courtesy the Artist

A video by Cédric Marville