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Haute Couture of the Sky
Photographs by Christian und Helga von Alvensleben

Hallerstraße 6 Hamburg Rotherbaum


Wednesday 10 April 2019 5.30 pm
Thursday 11 April 2019 5.30 pm


Elementary. With this word, the photographs that Christian and Helga von Alvensleben have created in recent years can be aptly described. The current work series HAUTE COUTURE DES HIMMELS now takes nothing less into consideration than the clouds, the atmosphere, the air.

The visual language of the 16 large-format photographs is also elementary. Without a horizon line, the sky stretches across the picture surface in full format. Sometimes light and airy, sometimes dark and threatening, water vapour combines to form cloud veils, vortices and cloud towers, which impressively show us the impressive depth and at the same time the fragile delicacy of the air shell around the globe. Add to this the fine desert sand that the Calima, the desert wind, blows from the Sahara to the air masses above the Canary Islands and you suddenly see exciting traces of colour in the sky.

Together with the photographer we follow the spectacle of the moving cloud formations. In a vertigo of perspectives, the top and the bottom lose their fixed meaning, we almost seem to float. Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station ISS looked and saw similarly. "Those who are honest up there can see how fragile the Earth's ecosystem is, with a wafer-thin atmosphere around it" he summarized his impressions and at the same time points out the responsibility of mankind for the responsible use of the world's resources.

After the salt of the saltworks and the lava rock of the volcanic island Lanzarote, the water masses of the giant waves and the splashing spray on the Portuguese Atlantic coast, after the portraits of ancient olive trees and the portraits of the people in the masks of ancient rituals on the Peleponnes, the atmosphere in the series Haute Courture of the Sky is like a natural continuation in the photographic confrontation with the archaic forces of nature.