Hamburg-based photographer Michael Poliza has traveled to 180 countries, but he doesn’t want to just tick off the travel destinations on a personal bucket list. Rather, he sees himself as a globetrotter, always on the lookout for breathtaking landscapes – hardly any cities, as he says himself.
“It’s always been nature and remote places that have drawn my attention.”
With his photo books “Africa”, “Island” and “Eyes over Africa” Poliza has set standards in landscape photography. And with the illustrated book “AntArctic“ he has created a sensitive double portrait of the two polar regions.
A world like on the sixth day of creation
He presented another masterpiece at the TeNeues publishing house, the XXL photo book with the slightly measured title “The World”. To this end, he has traveled to all seven continents over the past ten years and revisited many of his favorite places.
He was less concerned with capturing the world seamlessly and more with the photographic interpretation of unique natural beauty. “If it’s an incomplete version of our planet, that’s because it’s a very personal rendering of what I saw and enjoyed of the world,” says Poliza, who appeared in films as a child and later as 17-year-old made a career as an actor in the TV series “Tadelloser und Wolff”. He later worked successfully as an IT entrepreneur until he switched to becoming a nature and landscape photographer.
The end: “The World” by Michael Poliza. Published by teNeues, 280 color photographs with texts in German and English, price: 250 euros, autographed 299 euros.
© teNeues
In addition to primeval landscapes hardly influenced by humans, the photographs also show animals in the wild, and Poliza documents the fragility of this world with his 250 photos. This also leads him to the question: “Do I feel guilty because I disturb the peace of nature? Contribute to climate change? Of course,” is his answer. “But I also feel compelled to capture the incredible beauty of this planet.”
His book “The World” is to be understood as a homage to the wilderness of this planet. In the photo series we show some of the most beautiful motifs from the illustrated book.
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