Schleswig

Welcome to the ” Wunderwerk Natur ” exhibition. I invite you to a unique journey around, over and through our planet. Experience Earth in a new way – with my photographic works and the scientific context of the landscapes in the Earth system. My name is Dr Christian Klepp, I am a geoscientist and landscape photographer and have worked actively in international climate research for more than 25 years.

At a tipping point in my career, I realised that the mere accumulation of ever more scientific facts, as immensely important as it is, is clearly not enough to bring about sustainable change in politics, industry and society. For sustainability to really work, we need a positive emotional connection to our planet. Empathy and understanding are key to a sustainable approach to our planet.

Nature is home. It has been mine for as long as I can remember as a child. The wilder and more pristine it is, the more comfortable I feel in it. I have roamed through ice-cold and scorching hot landscapes, almost been struck by lightning several times, witnessed a solar eclipse and heard the explosion of a shooting star. I encountered wild animals face to face and listened to the stories being told by the rocks.
Rediscover our planet for yourself – and in the best case, you’ll fall in love with the flora, fauna and unique landscapes, just like I did.

The journey through the Wunderwerk Natur begins with a view into the starry sky from the South Island of New Zealand. The ethereal glow of the green aurora casts a mesmerising light over the arc of the Milky Way above the snow-covered New Zealand Alps.

These high-resolution astronomy photographs are created using a digital star tracking device, and it takes about seven hours to capture the complete panorama of the entire Milky Way arc.

Looking at the stars is the ultimate form of time travel, as the light from these stars has travelled tens of thousands of years before we can see it. What’s more, the starry night sky provides us with insights into our own existence. The earth and we living beings on it are made up of the remains of exploded stars, which makes us stardust in the truest sense of the word. This stardust can be recognised by the dark areas that traverse the bright band of the Milky Way like a dark river. Particularly striking is the dark cloud of the Coal Sack close to the famous Southern Cross constellation in the centre of the Milky Way and the V-shaped dark cloud in the bright left area of the Sagittarius constellation. Our sun and the earth also formed from such dark clouds. It is fascinating to imagine when and where these former stars may have sparkled in the firmament, of which we are made up today.

Emerald Lake in the Colorado Rocky Mountains is a unique place to marvel at the splendour of the Milky Way. In August, at four in the morning, the Milky Way appears exactly in the gap between Hallet Peak, which is over 3,800 metres high, and Flattop Mountain. A night out far away from our daily lives is a deeply moving experience. Such nights in the wilderness, during which I repeatedly encountered mountain lions and grizzly bears, inspire a respectful and sustainable mindset change.

The reflection of the stars’ streaks in the lake reveals the rotation of the earth during the photograph. It is therefore an illusion that we are at rest and static on earth. In fact, we are moving at a pace of 1000 kilometres per hour due to the Earth’s daily rotation on its own axis. In addition, the earth moves around the sun at more than 100,000 kilometres per hour throughout the year. As if this were not enough, the entire solar system orbits the centre of our Milky Way. This catapults us to an incredible two million kilometres per hour and such an orbit requires a mind-boggling 240 million years. That is such an inconceivable amount of time that we have only orbited the galaxy 19 times. At the last galaxy New Year’s Eve, the very first dinosaurs were partying. All of these movements overlap and this means that we will never be in the same place in the universe again, which makes us astronauts on our spaceship Earth.

The stunning scenery of the Mont Blanc massif in the French Alps, which rises up to 4800 metres in height, is reflected in Lac de Cheserys with the rising Milky Way. After five years of unsuccessful endeavours, the necessary conditions for this picture were finally given: the Milky Way at new moon with the fast-moving clouds, the freshly fallen snow that illuminates the mountains and the perfect reflection of the mountain panorama in the lake. Numerous ibex gathered around me watching curiously while I took the photo.

Our blue planet is an oasis of life. The only place we know of, in the depths of the universe. The fact that life could emerge on Earth and develop into complex life forms is anything but self-evident. Such an unlikely abundance of events was necessary for this to happen that I cannot resist referring to it as the “Wonderwork Earth”. Earth is at exactly the right distance from the sun to receive sufficient heat. It is exactly the right size to hold an atmosphere that we can breathe, it has a moon that stabilises the climate, and the heat inside the planet creates a magnetic field that protects life. And it has liquid water.

The planet, its climate and all life are tightly interconnected. We are a part of Earth, as is Earth a part of us. Whatever we do to Earth and nature, we do to ourselves.

If we imagine what it might have looked like on young earth when life originated, Fly Geyser in northern Nevada is the perfect place to envision it. It is the only geyser on earth that continuously spouts boiling water from seven vents. This enables heat-resistant bacteria to thrive, covering it with biofilms, thus lending it its surreal colors. The red areas are home to bacteria that can tolerate boiling water, while the green areas are colonised by bacteria that require temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius. It was such early land areas with geysers where evolution found enough time to experiment with life in a kind of primordial soup. For this photo, I stood for hours in the 50°C hot water, and if the coyotes hadn’t howled all night, I would have doubted that this place was of earthly origin.

Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to experience this stunning scenery today. Since these days, Fly Geyser has fallen victim to vandalism. It has been shot at with rifles, completely destroying its original beauty.

The picturesque Hamersley Gorge with its Spa Pool in Karijini National Park in northwest Australia is one of the oldest landscapes on Earth and the cradle of life. The colourful layers of rock surrounding the pool are banded iron ore. They formed up to 3700 million years ago at the bottom of an ocean that has long since vanished. Before this time, there was no free oxygen, neither in the oceans nor in the atmosphere. This landscape opens up a window to the early days of life, to a time when bacteria were the only inhabitants of the still young planet. They were the first to conduct photosynthesis and thus release oxygen into the ocean. Back then, the oceans were a murky, brown soup full of iron. When oxygen and iron meet, rust forms, and this sank to the bottom of the sea, forming this beautiful layer cake of rock. Over time, the previously muddy-brown water became transparent and rich in oxygen, which also escaped into the atmosphere. This is how these bacteria laid the foundation for all life on land. They are our ancestors; without them we would not exist. What is particularly fascinating is that they are still alive today, only 500 kilometres away from this place. The image “Shark Bay Symphony”, which is the second image after this one, shows these living rocks, that contain these bacteria, as black nodules in the tropical shallow water lagoon of Australia’s Shark Bay. They are the most successful species ever to inhabit the planet.

New Zealand’s wild and romantic coastline offers spectacular views on rock formations and steep cliffs that alternate with flat, rocky beaches. However, visiting this coastline is life-threatening. The tidal range is about 14 metres and access is only possible via a steep descent down a 100 metre high cliff. Nature gives you exactly 30 minutes to take such a photo during low tide. This photo was taken after 28 minutes, and the first excessively high wave can be seen in the area of the setting sun. The ice-cold water rose up to my chest. I almost lost my life in the current suction.

My fascination for such landscapes is rooted in the earth’s rocks. They undergo a powerful cycle that spans 500 million years. It begins with entire continents breaking up and drifting apart. In between them, new ocean basins open up, only to be recycled back into the Earth’s interior after 190 million years. When the ocean floor is completely recycled, the continents collide again in other places and formations, piling up sky-high mountain ranges. This fascinating rock cycle is only possible because the Earth’s crust is made up of two very different types of rock: The light granite of the continents and the heavy volcanic basalt of the ocean floors. Both types of rock are on display in the exhibition centre.

Experiencing a monsoon thunderstorm at sunset over the Grand Canyon in Arizona is one of nature’s wonders. I was surrounded by far too close lightning strikes, rolling thunder and heavy rain. Such moments awaken deep-rooted connections to our home planet and sharpen the awareness of how closely connected we are with the planet.

The image seems obvious: when continents collide, the result is a sky-high, glaciated mountain range. In fact, this idea is wrong and this is nowhere more evident than at the Grand Canyon on the Colorado Plateau. This terrain has risen to the same altitude as the Alps. Nevertheless, the Colorado Plateau with its altitude of well above 3000 metres is a flat land into which rivers have deeply incised canyons. The essential difference is in the water cycle. In the Alps, a lot of rain and snow reaches the mountains, causing glaciers to form. Their scouring force forms the relief of a high mountain range out of a plateau. If this water and snow input into the region is lacking, as here on the Colorado Plateau, a desert-like climate sets in and the mountains fail to form.

The panorama of the Aletsch Glacier and the Fiescher Glacier in the Bernese Oberland of the Swiss Alps is one of the most spectacular mountain landscapes in Europe. I took advantage of a severe thunderstorm to photograph this scenery from the summit of the Eggishorn at an altitude of almost 2900 metres. The Finsteraarhorn, which is over 4.200 metres high, gleams on the right-hand side of the image, illuminated by the sun in the pale yellow light of the storm. The active thunderstorm was more than six kilometres away and moving towards me. So I apparently had enough time to take the picture. However, what I could not see was that a new thunderstorm cell was forming right above the peak where I was standing, and the first lightning strike missed me by just a few metres. With tinnitus in my ears, tufts of flame from the Saint Elmo’s fire came out of each fingertip. An experience to never forget.

As a result of climate change, such weather extremes are becoming more frequent and more intense. Like all glaciers, the Aletsch reacts to global warming like a thermometer. It will disintegrate by 2080. Change is something completely normal for the planet. In deep time, Earth has already experienced much greater climate fluctuations when compared to human activity. However, we do not understand time. For us, 100 years is a long time, for Earth it is the blink of an eye. Ecosystems cannot adapt to such rapid changes. Every day, 150 species go extinct.

This impressive ice cave in the Svínafellsjökull glacier in Skaftafell, Iceland, is 50 metres long, 10 metres wide and 7 metres high. A prolonged period of cold winter weather offered me the rare opportunity to venture into the glacier via the frozen lake. Entering this ice grotto opened up a fairytale world, accompanied by the scary crackling and grinding sounds of the moving glacier. The black streaks in the ice are ash layers left by numerous volcanic eruptions. The deep blue and highly compacted glacier ice about 1000 years old and contains only a few trapped air bubbles. This ice is truly a climate archive, because the air bubbles can be analysed for their CO2 content. This not only gives us a detailed picture of how the CO2 content of the air has changed before and after the influence of humans, but also how rapidly this has happened.

I hope I have been able to inspire you on this journey over, through and into the “Wunderwerk Natur” for our beautiful planet. As humanity, we need a change of perspective and thus a new understanding of values in dealing with our planet, because: The earth does not need us at all. Humans, however, are highly dependent on Earth and its intact ecosystems.

We are now more than 8 billion people on this planet, which is why each and every one of us matters. We are all decision-makers at every moment, and it is up to us to decide the state in which we want to pass on our planet to our children and grandchildren. It is the small actions in everyday life that matter: Producing less CO2 through mindful avoidance. Planting wildflowers instead of lawns. Using things for longer. Throwing away less food – to name just a few examples. If everyone joins in, the small action becomes a great deed. Emotions and inner insight are important building blocks for a sustainable future. Why don’t you also tell those who don’t want to know about it?

I wish you sustainable joy in caring for your planet, yours Christian Klepp

Herzlich willkommen in der Ausstellung “Wunderwerk Natur”. Ich nehme Sie mit auf eine einzigartige Reise um, über und durch unseren Planeten. Erleben Sie die Erde neu – mit meinen Fotografien und der wissenschaftlichen Einordung der Landschaften in das Erdsystem. Mein Name ist Dr. Christian Klepp, ich bin Geowissenschaftler und Landschaftsfotograf und habe 25 Jahre lang aktiv in der internationalen Klimaforschung gearbeitet.

An einem gewissen Punkt meiner Karriere erkannte ich, dass das reine Anhäufen von immer mehr wissenschaftlichen Fakten, so immens wichtig dies auch ist, offenbar nicht ausreicht, um einen nachhaltigen Wandel in Politik, Industrie und Gesellschaft zu bewirken. Damit Nachhaltigkeit wirklich trägt, braucht es eine positive emotionale Bindung zu unserem Planeten. Empathie und Verständnis sind der Schlüssel für einen nachhaltigen Umgang mit der Erde.

Die Natur ist meine Heimat, und das schon seit meiner Kindheit. Je wilder und ursprünglicher sie ist, desto wohler fühle ich mich in ihr. Ich bin durch eiskalte und kochend heiße Landschaften gestreift, bin mehrfach fast vom Blitz getroffen worden, durfte einer Sonnenfinsternis beiwohnen und den Knall einer explodierenden Sternschnuppe hören. Ich bin wilden Tieren Auge in Auge begegnet, und habe den Geschichten der Gesteine gelauscht.

Bekommen auch Sie Lust auf unsere Erde – und im besten Fall verlieben Sie sich genauso wie ich in Flora, Fauna und einzigartige Landschaften.