Photographer Mark Hellweg works under the pseudonym “Brightway,” a translation of his last name from German into English. However, that pseudonym stands for more than his name: it is also an apt description of his approach to image-making. Hellweg says he has always had a passion for astrophotography, in which the camera’s eye is turned toward the stars and the night sky. In his pictures, he balances stark contrasts of light and darkness and captures a surprising variety of textures, and the resulting images have a physicality that pulls us immediately into the artist’s world.
That world is not only limited to the skies: Hellweg is also a strong landscape photographer, giving the natural world and urban environments the same sharpness, clarity and depth he gives to galaxies and constellations. Printing his work on canvas and a variety of photographic papers, he creates images that bring each scene to life, giving every element a fully realized presence. “To freely choose extracts and moments in the world,” he says, “is the particular appeal for me in this type of photography.”
