CLOTH AND COLD

Berlin-based photographer Anne Schwalbe photographs a collection of shibori scarves in the Black Forest of southern Germany. Her preoccupation with the handmade is evident in the way she connects the cloth to the earth; the scarves are integral to the landscape and the climate as if one and the same.

'I had taken some workshops in photography in high school, and I slightly had an idea to do something in photography when I was graduating,' Anne explains.

'However, I was not sure about what I really wanted to do at that time, so I went to Humboldt University in Berlin and studied German literature and culture.'

Shibori is the Japanese word for a variety of ways of embellishing textiles by shaping cloth and securing it before dyeing. The word comes from the verb root shiboru; to wring, squeeze, press.