Wout Berger has been concerned with marginal, distressed landscapes for decades. De Kerf is from a series of photographs of Ruigoord, a small village on the outskirts of Amsterdam. To accommodate expanding sprawl and prevent erosion, the area was covered loosely with sand and heavily seeded with wildflowers. Berger’s photographs capture the plants’ struggle to survive and the conflict between development and nature. By focusing on a patch of land, he inverts the traditional concept of landscape where the foreground, horizon and sky guide the eye through the space. Instead, as the viewer gazes, the small details which constitute the land emerge in this case the dry earth and grasses.

Wout Berger has long been interested in severely contaminated sites that he often photographs as if they were idyllic landscapes. Through his ‘Giflandschap’ (Poisoned landscape) project he recorded 170 chemical waste dump sites in the late 1980’s. His work has been exhibited extensively with solo exhibitions at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY; in the Netherlands at Galerie Van Kranendonck, The Hague and at Galerie Witteveen, Amsterdam; and at Casino Modern, Genk, Belgium; and Galerie Polaris, Paris, France. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Ecotopia, the second triennial of photography and video at the International Center of Photography, New York, NY, in 2006; In Sight at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, in 200. His work is in numerous collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and LaSalle National Bank, Chicago. More information can be found at http://www.bonnibenrubi.com/index3.html.