shashasha

Fascinated by their myriad forms, their beauty, their fragility, and their ability to reflect and channel the surrounding world within them, Swiss photographer Mäddel Fuchs has spent twelve years photographing dewdrops with an analog camera. His black and white images are the result of a slow, almost meditative process. To capture each dewdrop, Fuchs had to wait for just the right conditions - not too warm, not too sunny, not too windy - and tread carefully on the grass, because "my crawling just destroyed dewdrop worlds, which is tough on the soul.” His photographs range from isolated dewdrops to intricate arrangements; in some, the dewdrops take center stage, while in others Fuchs focuses on their delicate position in their surroundings or highlights the complex reflections within each drop. During a visit to Japan, Fuchs recognized a connection between his series and the classical Japanese sensibility toward nature, which is echoed throughout the book in eleven haiku and tanka poems by poets such as Ki no Tomonori, Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, Koda Rohan, Masaoka Shiki, Yosano Akiko, and Kawabata Bosha.

“How infinitely fragile is a dewdrop’s life and inner life. I can’t reach the beings without moving, and each move destroys entire worlds. Every careless breath too! I need to internalize this world, best of all, become a dewdrop myself. And a new life unfolds! I cannot find suitable words for this, nor for all that has happened to me in these many hours.”
― from Mäddel Fuchs’ foreword