Pictures from the garden Monserrate

Sintra, Portugal

Prof. Hartmut Jahn

Opening: Wednesday, November 15th 2017 at 1.00 pm

in the presence of the President of the University of Mainz, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Muth

Exhibition duration: November 15th 2017 – January 25th 2018

Finissage: Thursday, January 25th 2018 at 1 pm

Hochschule Mainz / Campus-Magistrale / Lucy-Hillebrand-Straße 2 / 55128 Mainz

Large-format panoramic shots (100 x 506 cm) in 180° brochures from the garden of Monserrate in Portugal explore the immersiveness of the photographic still image.

The Garden of Monserrate

To the north of Lisbon, the Serra de Sintra rises and provides a special microclimate. The mountain range, which rises up to 529 meters – the Romans called it the “Mountain of the Moon” – extends to the Atlantic Ocean and has its foothills at Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of Europe. Because of its altitude and climate, Pena and Sintra became the summer residence of the kings. Monserrate was originally the name of a small chapel built around 1540 near Sintra, in reference to the Benedictine monastery of Monserrate in Catalonia. There, the builder had seen the black Madonna, whose surface had been tanned almost black by time and weather.

Aerial roots formed by the Pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsus), the New Zealand Christmas tree.

William Beckford, in his time one of the richest men in England, became the new designer of the estate after Gerard de Visme. In 1794, he designed the gardens of Monserrate with a romantic “touch” in the open spaces. Beckford left Portugal in 1799 after five years – and Monserrate was left to decay.
Lord Byron visited the park and palace in 1809 and described it as “one of the most beautiful places I have seen to date – a second Garden of Eden. Monserrate gained new life in 1856 when the English textile millionaire Francis Cook bought it from the Mello e Castro family. In Victorian times these gardens were among the most beautiful and exotic in the world. It was also at this time that a new ruined chapel was built in the park in honour of the Virgin of Monserrate, reminiscent of a knight’s fortress.

At the center of this garden, in a protected warm valley, is a tropical garden with palms, pandanus (screw palm) and palm ferns. The Pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsus), the New Zealand Christmas tree at the head of the palace forms aerial roots to support its treetops. When the aerial roots have reached the ground, they develop into further branches, which is why the trunks of these trees are so strongly branched.

The chapel, built as an artificial ruin by Francis Cook near the original chapel “Our Lady of Monserrate” by Gerard de Visme.

The romantic Monserrate, created by Sir Francis Cook, was designed as a large “greenhouse outdoors”. The scale of the plant collections was easily matched by the palm trees, fern trees and palm ferns in the crystal palaces of the botanical gardens of London, Frankfurt and Paris.
Until twenty years ago, the palace and gardens were in a state of decay before restoration work began. Monserrate is part of the Sintra cultural landscape, which is now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Exhibition design
Dipl. Des. Manfred Liedtke, Uwe Zentgraf

Hartmut Jahn – Photography
Film and media artist, lives in Mainz and Berlin. His works have been awarded, among others, the Intl. German Video Art Prize of the ZKM Karlsruhe and the Golden Gate Award of the San Francisco Film Festival. His panorama cycle “The New Owners of the Berlin Wall” formed the exhibition of the German Foreign Office in Berlin on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hartmut Jahn is Professor of Film and Media Design at the Mainz University of Applied Sciences. His previous large-format exhibitions on landscape photography have also been shown here (2015-17):

• 2015 “NINFA – der schönste Ruinengarten”                                                                                                        
• 2015 “BLICKACHSEN – P. J. Lenné im Rheinland”                                                                                                   
• 2016 „An der Grenze des Gartens – Franz v. Anhalt-Dessau“                                                                           
• 2016 „Über den Garten hinaus – Hermann von Pückler-Muskau“                                                                  
• 2017 „LUST : LANDSCHAFT“