Anyone who accompanies scientist and photographer Klaus Zwerger on his hikes through the bamboo forests of Southeast Asia enters an overwhelming natural landscape that seems to transcend all description. Klaus Zwerger gives viewers time, yet in his images he sharpens their eye for details, for characteristics in the life cycles of bamboo, for the colorfulness of its stalks, and for the uniqueness of its rhizomes.
Klaus Zwerger’s accompanying text and the poems he has selected from the more than millennia-old Chinese tradition take us further. Behind the perception of the bamboo forest with all the senses lies the realization of a second reality composed of words, concepts, and symbols. The natural landscape of bamboo becomes transparent, revealing itself as a cultural and spiritual landscape—significant down to the last detail—that shapes and enriches human and social life.
Drawing on the depth and richness of philosophical, religious, and artistic traditions, Klaus Zwerger creates his images, in which bamboo emerges as a key symbol of Chinese thought.
Klaus Zwerger is a researcher, traveler, and photographer. He has taught at the Vienna University of Technology, Hosei University in Tokyo, and Southeast University in Nanjing, China. The focus of his work is the history and typology of wooden architecture.
