Cloud Creations
Berndnaut Smilde creates clouds to photograph in odd places using smoke and mist machines. The Dutch artist’s sculptures last five seconds—10 seconds tops—before they disappear.
Smilde’s ongoing project, called “Nimbus,” explores the visual effects of clouds. A church or museum interior looks different behind a cloud, and an everyday cloud is peculiar in a castle or a canyon. Each scene is made more intense by lasting only moments.
The ingredients for Smilde’s clouds: just smoke and water vapor. He requires a cold and damp space with no air circulation, lest the clouds never form or fall straight to the ground. He mists an area with a spray bottle to put water vapor into the air. Then he turns on fog machines that spout tiny particles, and the vapor condenses around them. He only attempts new images when the setting offers him something fresh as an artist. To him, the crucial takeaway is not the wonder of a fabricated cloud but its transience—that it exists for a moment and then is gone forever.
Each creation is “about being at the right place at the right time,” Smilde says. “If you’re seeing a photo, you already missed it.”
Each creation is “about being at the right place at the right time,” Smilde says. “If you’re seeing a photo, you already missed it.”
Stone, Daniel, and Chen, Nina. “This Artist Makes Clouds Appear in Unexpected Places.” National Geographic, 14 Feb 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/03/dutch-artist-berndnaut-smilde-creates-clouds-photographs-them/.