"New Trees" is a series of pictures whose basic research and documentary message is situated at the area of tension between serious examination of modern technical means of communication and an ironic look at those.
The artificial structures grow even bigger, higher, and more efficient in the air, and impose their monumental presence on the nearby surrounding. Like an alibi for their special obtrusiveness they intend to imitate the nature by form.
Antenna towers exert a contradictory effect on the viewer: on the one side there is a certain fascination regarding the technical achievements and the newly gained individual liberties that go along with it. On the other side these artificial giants have a threatening effect, as the question about side effects of the electrosmog on the people's health remains unanswered.
Since several years there is an extravagant trend which strives to an illusion for the viewer. The aim to become one with the natural environment is in the centre of these efforts. The coarse and barren transmission towers are visually adapted from trees and are rearranged in this way. The purpose of this camouflage is ambiguous: is it - like a military strategy - about to deceive the viewer's perception, to take from him his fears of the invisible but nevertheless real radiation, by transforming the antennas into a near natural structure? Or does this action base on the new esthetic landscape design of a certain business lobby?
The Arboretum, which Robert Voit started in 2003, shows quite a number of typologies, and it remains exciting what kind of artificial work the photographer will be discovering in the future.
Robert Voit (born in 1969) lives in Munich.
Exhibition views
© CDI / Christof Weber