Stone

More about the book

The beauty and impressive diversity of minerals and many other stones is often unsuspected from the outside. In order to discover the great riches of the world of colours and forms and to penetrate inside the stone, these finds, millions of years old, must be cut and then polished. Georg Kern's large collection of minerals includes some particularly fine crystallized pieces. Two years ago, by chance, he discovered under the stereomicroscope the diversity and beauty of colour of cut and polished minerals. Since then he has been photographing them in full sunlight, using a Nikon F-100 and a 105 close-up lens. Georg Kern's extreme close-ups have opened up to us a new world. It is a world that manifests fascinating parallels to the Earth as seen from above. In many agates we seem to recognize river estuaries, deserts and volcanic landscapes. Others remind us of modern or abstract art, of drawings of plumage, of plants or figurative representations. Quite simply, the very large is contained in the very small, and vice versa. An immense world of colours and forms emerges from these images, which can now be seen for the first time in all their diversity.