The Getty, Los Angeles (July 23, 2013 – January 19, 2014)
A recent acquisition by the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs, Hearsay of the Soul (2012) is a five-channel video projection by celebrated German filmmaker Werner Herzog (born 1942). The work juxtaposes the lush landscape etchings of seventeenth century Dutch artist Hercules Segers (1589–1638) with a dramatic score and performance by contemporary Dutch cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger (born 1954). This assembly of seemingly disparate parts, along with the simple visual technique of slowly panning over the prints, makes evident the complexity and delicacy of the individual images and fuses the intimate with the epic.
