Hidden Hills plays in the lands of the American West. It celebrates a mythical ritualistic dimension, the fading presence of ancient voices that whispered back from the ‘empty’ desert. Five years ago the photographer Cornelia Thonhauser started to explore the American West. During many road trips and long walks through the Sonoran Desert, she started to perceive the landscape as a container for her geographical and anthropological research. Taking images was an attempt to recover a somewhat buried spirituality.

Writer Hannah Bhuiya states in her text contribution:

Nature is a tough beauty fighting the long fight against the menace of concrete, tarmac and steel tower. The mountains in this desert landscape were set solid and strong in place by Gods who have been forgotten, even though most of the original Americans who guarded them are now buried in a graveyard of nationwide dimension. Their former presence is only emphasised in their haunting absence. The hidden hills are a monument to these many millions of missing persons.

Published by Blake & Vargas in 2021.

Portfolio for director Salomon Ligthelm⁣. The website uses Mach in all caps for the name. All other text is set in the sans-serif Neue Montreal and the fixed-pitch LL Akkurat Mono.

Salomon […] is a self-taught filmmaker whose international background – a childhood spent in Johannesburg, Dubai, and Sydney – figures strongly in his distinctive, visual style. His textural and experimental work finds new ways of exploring visual storytelling, always with a human story at its core.