“To The Mountains” by Dany Peschl started as a side project, something that itself was created seamlessly, like the atmosphere that it shows. It is named after a song by a Norwegian black metal band, Satyricon, and inspired by Nordic mythologies. Many of the images contain references to places and events of the lives of Nordic Gods. Their Valhalla is the supermarket. The nightmare haunted Baldr had died and lies wrapped in silk on the ground. The divine horse Sleipnir has fallen. Loki turns his back on his family and hides behind a rock to masturbate. But at the forefront are Dany’s personal encounters and what he summarizes with the words: that’s just me.

Indeed, images of this landscape capture an air of an omnipresent viewer, for whom the reality of the mountains unveils shamelessly. His posture as the observer is firm and he does not look away or judge his motives, his gaze is not frightened. And the humans living in the author’s mountains are not frightened back, they are rooted in these environments and their presence is central to each image’s composition. Although the presence of humans in the mountains usually brings questions of fragility, smallness and unimportance of mankind, in “To The Mountains,” these beings are something that persists. They might be challenged, but their limbs will merge with the limbs of fallen trees or they will inhabit buildings like ghosts, or they will walk away slowly or watch us from their heights.

Dany Peschl is a photographer and visual artist based in Berlin.