"Drunk" Forests and Burning Ice: Disturbing Nature Pictures in Noorderlicht

In Alaska, we can see the warming of the earth in trees: the deep permafrost thaws and the trees will twist. A drunk bouquet. In other places blinking on the ice and the blue flames of snow: methane gas can escape through the thaw and burns spontaneously.

These disturbing scenes, photographed by the German Benedikt Partenheimer, are part of In Vivo: The Nature of Nature . This is the 25th edition of the international Noorderlicht event, which is this year 'organically intertwined' at the Belvedere Museum in Heerenveen with Oase Oranjewoud a Dutch visual art exhibition on the flora and fauna.

Even more alienating than Partenheimers Alaska, these are the images that the Argentine Alejandro Chaskielberg made in Patagonia, where he discovered a labyrinth in the midst of a nature intact – and a beautiful symbol of the senseless domination of man over nature. Chaskielberg drove a flock of sheep between hedgerows, where they are now stranded and staring into the camera with a silly blue look of stupid helplessness

Closer to home, and extremely current, is the series on Oostvaardersplassen by American photography duo Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris. They follow the evolution of this "nature reserve" for six years. In this photo and video project, the subtitle of In Vivo becomes an urgent question: indeed, what is the nature of nature? Where will we go with fiction, or wish, to have an untouched nature in the Netherlands? A cautious photographic and video project brings a greater contribution to the debate than the demonstrations and even the death threats in which it degenerates.

Images with Stripes

In In Vivo there is also a more pronounced political work of the Australian Aletheia Casey. She mixes historical portraits and landscape images to give her vision of the colonization of Tasmania. To break the myth that this process would have been bloodless – that's what she calls herself "history consciously forgotten" – she photographed places where bloody struggles were taking place between the aborigines and the whites, and these images of strength worked with stripes.

There is a lot of work on In Vivo but it's a messy whole. It's a somewhat uncomfortable marriage with the visual arts of Oranjewoud in which artists tend more towards a pleasing aesthetic.

In Vivo also contains a rather different work, like the former director of Noorderlicht Ton Broekhuis who, as the only Dutchman, photographed nature in her own garden. And there is also a photo of Eddo Hartmann, an overview of the second edition of a collaboration between the University of Groningen and Noorderlicht, in which he depicts the work of Dutch researchers on landscape and the climate. And then almost a month after the opening of In Vivo in Heerenveen, the opening of In Vivo Extended with eleven Dutch photographers in a shopping center in Leeuwarden. With this diffuse design, Noorderlicht does not make the job easy for the visitor, but the work is worth it

In Vivo and Oase Oranjewoud Belvedere Museum, Heerenveen, up to September 23rd. In Vivo Extended with eleven Dutch photographers, can be seen from 14/7 to 2/9 in the Zaailand shopping center in Leeuwarden. Inl: Noorderlicht.com

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