“To use the terms filmmaker, author, photographer and globetrotter to describe Wim Wenders would be to limit the range of his interests and work. For many years now he has always taken an old panorama camera along with him on his travels, using it whenever the sheer wealth of what he saw and the impression it left on him burst the confines of the normal scale of things. Needles to say, this has often been the case for Wim Wenders, so so professionally relies on his eyes: infinite landscapes spread out before us, horizons divide the world into water, earth and air; deserts and mountain ranges overwhelm us with their emptiness and silence; house fronts, be it in Havana, Houston, Berlin or Jerusalem, offer us deep insights into the shallows of civilization. [...]

Wim Wenders refers to his collection as Pictures From the Surface of the Earth and in this way emphasizes that they are photographs of a world almost devoid of humans, a natural or manmade world viewed from a distance. What we see are landscapes and city vistas, photos of architecture, and nature - taken in the United States, Japan, Australia, Israel, Cuba and Germany. They not only shed light on the many guises the “surface of the earth” dons, but also attest to Wenders’ contemplative and likewise amazed gaze.” (Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2003)