To follow Klaus Zwerger on his journeys through the bamboo forests of South-East Asia means stepping into an overwhelming natural landscape that appears to transcend all description. The researcher and photographer leaves his viewers time, yet his pictures sharpen their eye for detail, for the characteristics of bamboo life-cycles, for the colourfulness of stalks and the uniqueness of rhizomes.
Zwerger’s accompanying text, and the poems he has selected from over a millennium of Chinese tradition, take us even further. Once the bamboo forest is perceived with all of the senses, a knowledge opens out – of a second reality, one of words, concepts, and symbols. The natural bamboo landscape turns transparent, brimming with significance down to the least of its details. It is a cultural and spiritual landscape, shaping and enhancing the lives of humans and of society.
From out of the density and richness of philosophical, religious, and artistic traditions, Klaus Zwerger creates images that reveal the bamboo as a key symbol in Chinese thought.
Klaus Zwerger is a researcher of wooden architecture, a traveller, and a photographer. He taught at TU Wien, at Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan, and at Southeast University in Nanjing, China.
