Anika Schwarzlose: Seeing into Stone

‘Seeing into Stone’ describes a technique applied by experienced stone carvers, when they work on sculptural objects: before they start cutting into a stone they contemplate its surface to anticipate the structure and natural growth beneath it. This ritual of looking into opaque matter describes a spiritual practice. At the same time it functions as a metaphor for a special kind of tunnel vision, focused on what lies invisible under a surface.

This book is a time travel through past and present, above and below ground… Landscapes, impacted and even created by resource extraction are put into context with contemporary industrial mining equipment and historical cast iron utilitarian goods. Through the combination of images from very different archives, connections are made that speak about the complex relationships of humans and minerals. Images and texts contribute to a debate on mineral and human coevolution, that redefines the separation between life and non-life.