Alfred Seiland (born 1952 in St. Michael, Austria) got engaged in photography as an autodidact in the late sixties and after first contacts to the American gallery world he started to work as a freelance professional photographer. Impressive, carefully composed, color landscape photographs taken with a large-format camera became his trademark. His first book, East Coast West Coast (1986), was the result of numerous trips he took through the United States between 1979 and 1986. In this publication his own particular visual language became recognizable and he developed it further while working on the legendary FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) campaign, Hinter dieser Zeitung steckt Immer ein kluger Kopf. Since 1997 Seiland has been a professor of photography at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. Since 2006 he is traveling the world for his so far most extensive project Imperium Romanum, searching for traces of the Roman Empire in the landscapes and cities of the twenty-first century.

Select exhibitions include Imperium Romanum, Rencontres d’Arles 2016, Musée National d’histoire et d’art, Luxemburg, and Römisch-Germanisches Museum, Köln, Germany; Dahinter steckt immer ein kluger Kopf, 1995-2001, Villa Grisebach, Düsseldorf, Germany; East Coast – West Coast, Art Institute of Chicago, Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria, and Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz, Austria; World Press Photo, 2005.

[Hartmann Projects]