Hubert Humka, DEATH LANDSCAPES, 2018

We often admire the beauty of surrounding landscape. We admire its landform, plants, we contemplate HERE and NOW. But if and how often we think about what actually happened in this place in the PAST? To a large extent it depends on our knowledge of the particular place’s history. But what if we don’t know anything about it? 

DEATH LANDSCAPES is the second book by Hubert Humka. This time, Humka focuses on the landscapes. They are contaminated landscapes, marked by their history: on the one hand, they are idyllic, but on the other – they contain the stigma of the events that they silently witnessed. In the seemingly immovable landscape one can find cracks, splits, even physical scars. The traumatic events that left them were of different nature: from collective (battle field or terrorist attack) to tragedies affecting a single man (suicide or victim of a murder).

Is the ‘Love Path’ on the small Norwegian island of Utøya still as it was before the blood of the assassin’s victims soaked in? How does the idyllic charm of the place break down in the context of trauma, leaving a stripped landscape?

But most of all, DEATH LANDSCAPES is a story about man. It is an attempt to answer the question: Is a conducive intersection of time and space revealing the dark side of his/our nature? Is it possible to approach the dark truth about a man/us through landscapes?

Hubert Humka’s book contains a number of inserts that give it additional meaning. There is a report on the death penalty execution or a never published before diary of a serial killer, among others.