Hans Strand on Using World-renowned Landscapes to Address Climate Change

Although Hans Strand has received a stack of prestigious international awards for his photography, it is his time spent in nature capturing landscapes in time, and focussing our collective attention on man-made ecological degradation, that is his real reward.

WORDS: OSKAR HAMMARKRANTZ, PHOTOGRAPHY: HANS STRAND

Patterns. That is what Hans Strand looks for in nature. Repetitive, geometrical patterns created by coincidence or nature’s orderly chaos. When chaos comes to order, these patterns sometimes arise, if you look from a certain distance.

As a result, his world-renowned landscape photography often depicts graphic sections of nature with striking beauty and aesthetics, even though nature isn’t always as untouched as it first seems. “The wilderness is the mother of all living things. It is always true and never trivial,” Strand says.

Growing up in a small community next to one of Sweden’s longest, most magnificent and most powerful rivers, the Ljusnan, water holds a special place in Strand’s photography.

“I have always had a fascination for water. I simply like to photograph water in all its forms… still and calm, providing reflections and a feeling of tranquility… vivid and wild, providing a sense of power, and so on. The Scandinavian forests also have a place deep in my heart. Nothing is more calming for a stressed mind than walking through a forest. Trees are stationary and stable elements that positively influence the human mind. It is not without reason that we are hugging trees.”

“I have always had a fascination for water. I simply like to photograph water in all its forms… still and calm, providing reflections and a feeling of tranquility… vivid and wild, providing a sense of power, and so on.

Strand has won a long line of international prizes and awards and is considered one of the world’s foremost landscape photographers, but it wasn’t always obvious that photography should be his form of expression. Strand painted a lot in his younger years, and you can easily see traces from expressionist landscape painters in his images. Strand was actually well into his 20s when he picked up a camera for the first time. Studying to become a mechanical engineer at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Strand and his classmates went on a school trip to San Francisco. He bought a camera and some lenses, and set off to Yosemite National Park, shooting 21 rolls of film, and was hooked.

“There I found the magic of putting four corners on the landscape in front of me. A connection I can still feel when I’m out shooting. Everyone in my class found me a bit crazy shooting 21 rolls of film, but it was just the result of my immediate passion for landscape photography.”

After graduation, Strand worked as an engineer for nine years before finally pursuing a new career as a photographer in 1990. “You can probably see my background as an engineer in my photographs. The aim for technical perfection and the fascination for repetitive patterns and order,” he states.

“I have always had a fascination for water. I simply like to photograph water in all its forms… still and calm, providing reflections and a feeling of tranquility… vivid and wild, providing a sense of power, and so on.

In his first years as a photographer, Strand wanted to capture the beauty and aesthetics of wild nature, where no man has left their footprints, and he endeavoured to capture the frozen grandeur in a static frame. His work has since taken him all over the world and all these flights have actually made his art go in another direction. During one flight over Andalusia in Spain, Strand noticed some interesting patterns in the landscape below. He soon realised it wasn’t the beauty of the untouched; instead, it was created by humans. It is man-made landscapes that dominate our earth.

“There is no denying the impact human beings have had on the land. Taking advantage of the earth’s resources, humans consume and destroy without a second thought, resulting in a loss of diversity in wildlife and vegetation,” he reflects.

From that moment of revelation, Strand’s photography took a different path. He wasn’t any longer chasing the untamed and untouched wilderness. Instead, he wanted to make us aware of what we are doing to our planet.

“It’s this kind of human destruction of the earth that I try to capture, both literally and figuratively. The patterns that human impact forms on the earth’s surface are graphic artwork in itself, and I want to make us realise the extent of our actions. Humans have weaved wounds into the earth’s surface through acts of deforestation and digging up the earth for irrigation systems and growing crops. The shapes of the fields are just results of the topography and the farming techniques, and the aesthetic look from above is just a lucky side effect.”