This film is what set passion on fire for Polaroid photography”. He described this moment to us: “…It is incredibly fascinating to see this type of photography, it was like diving into another parallel universe ruled by rich blues and heavy flames. Though we often have grand visions of what epiphanies look like, Bastian’s muse was a simple one: an image taken on expired Polaroid Time Zero Film by Raymond Molinar that he found in 2008. It took Bastian almost 30 years to realize the magical nature of the place he was lucky enough to be transported to upon his birth. However, as with all things, time and maturity find a way of sneaking into our worldly perceptions about the time we have on earth and what we plan to do with it. It was fast, exciting, and modern, all of the things his small home town was deficient in. The act of skateboarding itself was a place for Bastian to escape his small town prison by diving into a meditative mental state that set him free. Skateboarding enabled him to channel his youthful creativity through a medium that could be applied to his individuality, riding and customizing unique skateboards and seeing his immediate surroundings as a canvas to be athletically painted on. Initially, he combated these feelings with around the clock skateboarding, rebelling against his communities natural beauty by surfing its paved streets and launching himself off it’s towering staircases. Like a wolf trapped in a cage aching to run wild, he yearned for a place that would allow him to attend exciting parties, skate radical skateboarding spots, and participate in the adrenaline-filled adventures with his teenage companions in debauchery. Usually, a big city with interesting people and places, anywhere but his small rural hometown that only had mountains, forests, and lakes. Ignoring this huge natural playground around him, Bastian constantly dreamed of being somewhere else.
#ETERNAL LANDS SHOP FULL#
Although it was full of life, it could seem completely lifeless to the uninitiated young Bastian who had yet to experience its alchemical properties. However, like most young men and women, 93 miles of nature doesn’t sound that appealing. Just 10 minutes away lives the Bavarian National Forest, Germany’s first national park with 93 square miles of nature preserves. Though his home town was small, the wilderness areas surrounding it was not. For the majority of his life has wanted to escape too this feeling, not from.īorn in 1980 in Freyung, a rural town nestled between the Czech and Austrian borders with a population of just 7,300 people in southeastern rural Germany, the lack of youthful and modern activities weighed on Bastian’s mind throughout his adolescence.
However, his relationship with these feelings was an inverse one. Bastian has intimate knowledge of this mindset that we have all experienced: the feeling of subconscious oppression that dwells within us from our homes located in the metropolitan centers of the world. He shared with us that “There is a hectic nervousness out there in the cities, the villages, and our workplaces because individuals don’t take the time to experience and explore the meditative essence of nature”.
He truly believes that the wild nature of our wilderness areas can tame our souls and provide us real-world health benefits that can only be experienced and never told. Bastian has been able to master and tame the unpredictable nature of these long expired films and harness their magical colorful properties to bring the transformative properties of nature right to our doorstep.īastian’s intent in bringing you into his world isn’t a self-indulgent one, he aims to inspire you to get out and explore the world around you, with or without a camera, with the goal of immersing yourself with the gentle noises of the wind, the distant chatters of animals, and the silent knowledge of the mountains that have been standing since time immemorial. This connection has allowed us to explore and experience stunning mountain peaks, enchanting vistas, and cold frozen forests that seem more like our own memories than photographs due to his innate ability to work with long expired Polaroid film stocks. The scenes he captures are a distinctive hybrid between breathtaking landscapes and intimate self-portraits that creates an instantaneous portal from his world to ours. German photographer Bastian Kalous has a habit transporting us to enchanting larger than life locations that we could only dream of visiting, that happens to be just outside his doorstep.
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