"In the Snow V, Allgäu"

gelatin silver print on baryta

signed, titled, dated and numbered on verso

You can put snowflakes under the microscope and classify them scientifically: Water vapor frozen to dust or soot particles in the highest layers of air. No heavier than 0.004 grams, the flake. A construct of dendrites, hexagons, which takes its time on its journey to earth, because the air resistance cancels out the earth's gravity. Like on a cushion it sails into the depths, the flake.
But you can also take a Leica and try to capture this magical floating state. This is how the photographer Donata Wenders, who lives in Berlin and Los Angeles, did it. A few years ago she dedicated her series In the Snow to hovering. There are eleven impressionistic black-and-white photographs in small format. Grey, opaque winter light in the Allgäu. The silhouette of a woman, fragile, out of focus, set in boundless swirls of flakes. The contrast between the static figure and the random movement of the snow crystals is striking.
Fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh is a friend of Donata Wenders and her husband, filmmaker Wim Wenders. Lindbergh's photographs mostly depict cool, proud amazons - exactly the opposite of the blurred woman crossing her arms shivering. Lindbergh is fascinated by In the Snow: "Donata sees things we don't see. Her light, her deep black and the fine gray studies in her pictures show how beautiful it must look inside her. Her openness to everything gives us an idea of what it takes to give pictures such poetry."
(Anna von Münchhausen, Die Zeit, No. 53/2014)