Helene Schmitz: Thinking Like a Mountain

Man's problematic relationship with nature In ”Thinking Like A Mountain” Swedish photographer Helene Schmitz has explored four forms of extraction of natural resources, the forest, the bedrock, the river and the hot spring. Schmitz has been in the middle and north of Sweden where she photographed forestry and mining. In Iceland, she has explored a dam building and a thermal power plant for the extraction of geothermal energy. The work started in autumn 2014 with the series The Forest. “Thinking Like a Mountain” can be regarded as an in-depth and further development of the theme in a number of Schmitz's previous projects, including The Forest and Linnaeus Project. In these contexts, she has analyzed the human colonization of nature through systematics, natural vision and natural resource extraction, and the consequences of it for landscape, flora, fauna and humans. The topic is urgent and has a particular topicality with the many forest fires of the summer and climate change in mind.