Painting with light!
"If I manage to convey what I saw and felt in the moment in a picture, then the viewer has the opportunity to engage with it. By omitting any reference points that suggest the size of what is shown, the viewer has to take time and get involved with the picture in order to discover it for themselves. Ideally, this creates a relationship between the picture and the viewer. I don't see myself as a “classic photographer” but rather as a light grinder. Light plays a decisive role in all my work. And painting with light is photography in the truest sense of the word."
His work has been awarded several times in international photography competitions.
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Poetry of Silence No. 118, 2024 -
Poetry of Silence No. 135, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 146, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 152, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 155, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 160, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 161, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 807, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 808, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 810, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 811, 2024
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Poetry of Silence No. 126, 2024
born in Grabs/Switzerland,
lives in Schaan/Liechtenstein and works worldwide,
studied music at the Lucerne Jazz School and the Lucerne Conservatory.
Since 2018, Blum has been working on his multi-award-winning international photography project “Poetry of Silence”, which sees him return time and again to the Namib Desert (from the Nama language “an area where there is nothing”) in Namibia.
Blum travels mainly in the remote northern part of the Namib. It is there that he creates the quiet poetry of his large-format photographs. On the Atlantic coast, which borders the desert to the west, the cold Benguela current of the Atlantic meets the barren land. Almost every morning, thick fog settles over the desert, caused by the rapid cooling of the sea air at night. In the helicopter, Blum flies directly along the edge of the fog with his telephoto lens and is repeatedly drawn deep into the breathtakingly archaic world of the Namib. But before he photographs these aerial shots, he takes a lot of time to build up a relationship with the landscape: he takes long walks at night and during the day to study the different light conditions and their effect on the landscape.
The results are silent verses in the form of visual poems - a tribute to this incredible and unique landscape.
In 2021, Blum won the Silver Award at the New York Photography Awards.
In 2022, he was able to co-design the Namibia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with parts of this work.
In 2023, he won first prize in the ‘Abstract’ category at the renowned Monochrome Photography Awards with his work ‘Poetry of Silence XXVI-7’. In the same year, his first book ‘Poetry of Silence’ was honoured with the Silver Award at the Tokyo Photography Awards. The book was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023 and 2024.
In 2024, he received the Gold Award at the London Photography Awards in the category ‘Fine Art Photography - Abstract (Professionals)’ for his work ‘Tidal Tales No. 1’. The award-winning photo of a group of islands in the Indian Ocean was taken by Roland Blum in a helicopter from a height of around 3,000 metres.
In 2024, Roland Blum wins the Silver Award in the ‘Fine Art Abstract’ category at the prestigious Prix de la Photographie Paris, his most recent award for the time being, which gives him the opportunity to show his works in a group exhibition in Paris in November - at the same time as the solo presentation at the bechter kastowsky gallery in Vienna.
In 2024, his photo book ‘Poetry of Silence I’ is among the 20 best in the Eiger Foundation's African Photobook of the Year Awards.
Blum's photographs can be seen both nationally and internationally, in Liechtenstein, Feldkirch, Zurich, Munich, Milan, as well as in Glasgow, Athens, Barcelona and Chopqing (China).
