Mariko's Wonderland

A childhood fascination for silent, enchanting landscapes drew Mariko Klug to pick up a camera and start searching. She speaks to Nilofer Khan about her journey.

- Nilofer Khan

How often do you look back at your childhood memories? The first time you learned to cycle, got involved in a heated argument with a close friend, or spent an entire summer night gazing at the stars. With each of these moments, you learned a little bit more about yourself and life. In some way, it has contributed to building your personality and vision. For some people, revisiting a place or a person who played a crucial role helps to stay connected with those emotions and moments. But then, there are also those who can’t go back because things changed or ceased to exist. So, they choose to recreate the wonder they felt as a child, through art, or, as with Mariko Klug, through photography.

Her breathtaking photographs of nature and landscapes are her renditions of the fascinations she felt when she was a child. “When I visited the amusement park with my family, I went for a Pirate’s World boat ride. The surrounding was extremely dark, and the sole source of light was the moon. Right at the beginning of the ride, there was an old wooden hut. There, an old man was sitting on a rocking chair. The dim light, the swirling fireflies, the sound of crickets and frogs, and the mood surrounding the hut—everything was so melancholic and mysterious. Although it was an artificial world, I instantly fell in love with it. Since then, I have been longing to witness something like this. Through my work, I am trying to find this feeling again,” she says.

A Blend of Colours and Composition