Renate Aller: Ocean | Desert

This project by German-born photographer RENATE ALLER, titled Ocean | Desert, is an extension of the ongoing series and sold-out book Oceanscapes (Radius Books, 2010). Aller has continued to make images of the ocean from a single vantage point—for which she is internationally known—but for the last several years, she has also photographed sand dunes in New Mexico and Colorado.

She has now paired the resulting images in a fascinating new series that continues her investigation into the relationship between Romanticism, memory, and landscape in the context of our current socio-political awareness. There is both a visual and visceral relationship between the two bodies of work, as though the minerals of the sand dunes carry the memory of the ocean waters that were there millions of years before. The desert images also capture visitors to the dunes, who engage in beach activities far away from any large body of water. 

Born in Germany, RenateAller lives and works in New York. “Mountain Interval” and the artist’s previous projects “Ocean and Desert”, “dicotyledon” (published by Radius Books=) and the long term project “Oceanscapes – One View – Ten Years” (co published by Kehrer Verlag and Radius Books) support the artist’s investigation into the relationship between Romanticism, memory and landscape – in the context of our current socio-political awareness.

Her works are in the collections of corporate institutions, private collectors and museums, including Lannan Foundation (New Mexico), National Gallery of Art (DC), Yale University Art Gallery (Connecticut), George Eastman House (New York), New Britain Museum of American Art (Connecticut), Hamburger Kunsthalle, (Germany), Chazen Museum of Art (Wisconsin) Parrish Art Museum (New York), Musée des Beaux-Arts (Switzerland), and New-York Historical Society Museum.