In our understanding of the mystical world, forests play an outsized role, undoubtedly because they seduce us with their wildness and make us think of originality and intactness. This might make them the perfect antagonist of our controlled and artificial daily life, a relief from concrete and calendars. The dark corners are vaguely reminiscent of the days of dangerous animals, the unrestrained entwining of ivy of unrestricted freedom, the soft moss between the sparse trees of the romantic idea of untouched, pure nature.

But how pristine is our nature? The images challenge our romantic notion of the wild forest by showing multiple human interventions in it. Sawed down trees, fragments of leisure culture and traces of agricultural use document the obvious fact, that our idea of nature has always been an idea of a nature controlled, shaped and influenced by us. In Europe, free, untamed (and at times dangerous nature) is practically non-existent. At best, it is meticulously observed, fenced in and prepared for exhibition in a few national parks.

Does this reveal a deeper issue with our understanding of nature and our collective need to control it? Or it is just a pragmatic step to make something enjoyable in a purely hedonistic way—how else would we enjoy something if it had bears, wolves and other dangerous animals in it? In both cases we need to think about the relationship between control and lack thereof, between enjoyment and danger, between the everyday and the unforeseen.

Something that is seen as wild and free is not, simply because we could not enjoy it as such if it would be. That would be the simple takeaway. Nevertheless, the images are more subtle in their criticism, as nature has already reclaimed part of our intervention in them. It is suddenly no longer clear whether the intervention is of a human nature at all, blurring the responsibility for the intended design. Because in the end, the counter-question can always be asked: Isn't man also nature?