“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Thursday January 23rd — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Thursday January 23rd — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Thursday January 23rd — —

Traffic Lights

We love this photography series named ‘Traffic Lights’ by 20-year-old Landau-based photographer Lucas Zimmermann. The series was captured during a foggy night at an intersection close to the  historical German city Weimar. Zimmermann created the images taking 5 to 30 second long exposures. Consequently, the colours and lights melted together and a highly surrealistic aesthetic was created. Shot with a fairly reliable camera when it comes to low light, the Canon 5D Mark II, the photographs show, next to his keen eye, also the craft of the young German. When the exposure would become too short, too much noise would occur. At the same time, too long exposure washed out the colors. This balancing act made the project a test of patience, which in the end produced these beautiful images.

In a conversation with SLR Lounge, Zimmermann expresses how his love for detail drives his photography:

I am in the habit of finding a beautiful image in the seemingly mundane, and it’s usually through good light. When I get asked for a tip on how to take better photos, and that’s often, I almost universally tell the budding photog to, “look for good light.” As any photographer worth his L lens knows, light affects a photo pretty much more than anything else. I see it all the time with photos that catch my eye; the contrast is magnificent; the highlights so interesting; yes the saturation and detail as good as you’d get from a Leonardo, and it’s all so well done that you don’t care that the subject is actually a tv remote.

It is impressive how the ambitious Lucas Zimmermann has been photographing on jobs worldwide since 2009 already, and despite his young age had his first exhibition in Beijing in 2012. Next to his solo work, in December 2012, Zimmermann also founded photography group LUMA Visual Creations together with Maria Le Quang with whom he also takes on photography projects.

For more information on Traffic Lights see here, and other work by Lucas Zimmermann see here.