Willi Filz: Camino

Usually, people who talk about the Camino de Santiago mention the many kilometres they have travelled, the countless encounters along the way, and evenings spent in rustic guesthouses. Willi Filz (b. 1962) travelled the two great northern Spanish Caminos between 2015 and 2022 after falling victim to a twist of fate. His enchanting landscape and nature photographs do not show streams of pilgrims, lodgings, or cathedrals, but instead bear direct testimony to the experience of stillness and contemplation. The black and white photographs show motifs viewed directly from the Camino, drawn from moments of pause and contemplation. The photographer is not concerned with any kind of spectacular narrative. The incidental is always there on our journeys, the insignificant always plays a part and, if I pay attention to it, it whispers in my ear many of the answers I have spent years searching for. Text in English, German and French. Willi Filz speaks a very autonomous photographic visual language. The focal points of his free work are the landscape, the portrait and people in general. His sharp-eyed pictures take a look at people of all ages unpathetically and without attitudes. The landscape, social or age-related context appears discreet and almost incidental, but is an element of characterisation. His landscapes, too, are of a special power of observation and sensibility, foreshadowing the whole in the detail. Whether in colour or black and white, they always get to the heart of the matter and connect the individual with the general. 70 b/w illustrations