Award-winning photographer Peter Hamel used a Cessna to explore the west coast – from Borkum to Sylt – and create a fantastically beautiful portrait of a landscape shaped by wind, water and waves. His bird’s-eye view makes it possible to reshape the limits of how we perceive the magnificent natural wonder of the Wadden Sea.
Creeks spread like the talons of a hawk, and boldly colourful veins of water meander through the tidal flats. A constantly changing nature generates breathtaking phenomena. Becoming drunk on his heights, so to speak, Peter Hamel discovers sensational motifs in the sometimes reckless, banked turns of his plane and in the extremely rapid changing of his lenses. He feels like a flâneur following the flow of the tides. The gentle chromatic transitions offered by this amphibious space as well as the striking diversity of forms among the emerging and submerging sandbanks instil a greater sense for this unique ecosystem’s vulnerability.
Lürzer’s Archive has repeatedly selected Peter Hamel as one of the world’s 200 best advertising photographers over the past 20 years. His aerial photographs earned gold from the international “Gregor Calendar Award” and were nominated for the German Design Prize.
