Rural Walks along the Danube | Lu Mazen
I was raised in a small village, it was the playground of my youth. After years of travel, I now spend most of my time in the Bavarian countryside. My main contact with the village is going on a walk, a daily ritual. The walk is a physical necessity, my body calls for air, for the rays of the sun, for wide vistas in an open landscape. Other days, I follow the village streets, tarred ground, moving along the front gardens, man-made narrower vistas. The majority of the houses are inhabited, but the side streets are empty, I meet only few people on my trips.
Often, I choose the lonelier tracks and walk in the fields, frozen up in winter, muddy in all seasons. I have a real sensation of walking, I glide on the ice, I skid on the melting, watery snow. I sink into brown slush with my waterproof boots, hear the squishing melody, the soaked beat.
I watch the other villagers walk other roads from a distance. I am in a landscape movie, a spectacle of space and light, the skies showing scenes, like cloud dramas or a sunset romance. It comes with a reduced awareness of time, manifested by the scarce movement of people at distant horizons, the slow motion of clouds in transit.
The village is old, the land has been agricultural land for centuries. Spots of wild growth remain only where the Danube and the accompanying high ground water levels create swampy areas and water fens meander through the farmland, overgrown with bushes, tall trees standing by. In summer, they remain the realm of ducks and frogs, in winter, these are used for ice skating. Each village gathers at their respective “own” ice fen, individuals and groups of two keeping the distance also of the ice. I watch a scene that would not have been much different 500 years ago, you just deduct the 21th century dress code.
The fields are as much public and private space. Formally, the land belongs to farmers taking care of it, he plants and harvests the crops. He takes home fruit and vegetables and aching muscles. The farmer works physically and mentally, even though machines are in use everywhere.
The suburban inhabitants of the village use the same land for recreation. They take a walk in the fields and in that sense farmland has become a public space, visited daily by walkers. Some may enjoy the open horizon, others may not even notice the land, just their own movement in space, the chat with their friends or relatives, or remain self-absorbed. Some take home an image, on their phone or in their head. Some neighbours comment to me “How beautiful it is here” when going on their walks. We share the sky above us, the air, the pathway.
If you are after the “wild” out here, you have to look for the waterways, a great place to play and to experience. The waterways are left to grow as nature has it, but they are contained by farmland, I cross the demarcation lines where the cultured ground stops and the wild steps in. As soon as I leave the road, enter small a narrow trail, experience gets more immediate. You need to be mindful, watch your step, push branches away. I walk on ice in winter, listen to frogs’ music in summer. There is a real “fun park” out there for children to play, experience nature and the wild, right next to suburbia.
My current photography project explores place, a construct set in time and space, made meaningful by its connection to how humans use and take care of the land, as their base for existence, for community, for play.
by Lu Mazen
All images shown are the artist’s work.
Lu Mazen is a visual artist from Munich, Germany. Her art incorporates themes of place and environment, identity and memory, expressed in photography and video. After international studies, Lu exhibited in international art festivals, institutions and galleries and won artistic prizes, such as Px3, Arte Laguna, Lynx or South West German Price. Lu’s hand-made book False Moons was a finalist in the 2020 9th Rendez-Vous-Images festival in France. Selections of her photos were published in magazines, newspaper and books.
After university and travels in Europe, North America and Asia, Lu attended master classes at ICP, Magnum and at the Salzburg Summer Academy. Teachers include Eli Cortinas, Josef Schulz, Oded Wagenstein and Sonja Braas. She recently completed a masterclass in Paris with Jean-Christian Bourcat, Nicolas Havette and Jane Evelyn Atwood. In 2021, Lu got accepted to a residency with the School of Visual Arts in New York and a residency with the Work Show Grow School in UK.