Blackbrook is a series created near a Trappist monastery in England after two weeks of meditation by a lake. Algae floating in the water and seeds suspended on the water move slowly and continuously. Markus Bollen usually monitors the screen meticulously, right down to the corners of the frame, checking which leaf should be visible at the edge of the frame. He positions each detail with millimeter-precise adjustments of camera and lens. In this series, however, he had to relinquish the final bit of control because, while switching from the screen to the film magazine, the subject continued to move on the water. Reflections of the sky and the surrounding trees, and the structures of the scattered seeds and leaves, create almost abstract renderings of nature. Some viewers associate images of the night sky, like the Milky Way. Looking behind the facade, one naturally has to ask: Why are there so many algae floating in the lake? Are they a sign of the over-fertilization of the agricultural land whose groundwater flows into the lake?

This series is dedicated to Duane Michels. 

God truly dwells in this place, and I did not know it, Jacob once said. So you too seek God, dear soul, and yet he is everywhere. Everything proclaims him to you. Everything gives him to you. He walked beside you, he surrounded you, he permeated you, and dwelt within you—yes, he remains within you: and you sought him! You strove for an idea of God and thereby essentially possessed him! You pursue perfection, while it lies in everything you encounter unsought. In the form of your sufferings, your actions, the impulses you receive, God himself confronts you. Meanwhile, you strive in vain for sublime ideas with which he does not want to clothe himself in order to take up residence with you. P. de Caussade (Book Two, Chapter 3, § 5, pp. 160-161)