In the wee hours of a beautiful New Year's Day in the Sahara, Oskar Landi tossed and turned, unable to sleep. As his fellow campers snoozed the night away, Landi emerged from his sleeping bag to stretch his legs and get some air. Embers still glowed in the remains of a fire, and a full moon illuminated the dunes in the distance. Struck by the beauty, he took a picture. "It's a completely alien landscape, with this blasting light, surrounded by no noise whatsoever," he says. "It's a different reality."
Fifteen years later, Landi remains enamored by the moon. He's photographed it in 11 countries on four continents for a series he calls Plenilunium, which is Latin for “full moon." The ongoing project combines two passions---the wilderness and silence. “Out there, in the humbling grandeur of nature, you’re really free to wander,” he says.
The New York photographer chooses locations well beyond the light pollution of urban areas, places like Death Valley and Svalbard, an arctic archipelago midway between Norway and the North Pole. He's something of an expert on the moon, meticulously following the lunar calendar and catching a last-minute flight someplace new. Once there, he spends a few days scouting locations and shoots from 3 a.m. until dawn. He works with a variety of cameras, making exposures as long as 30 minutes without flash. The results are breathtaking, the moon casting soft, ethereal light over all he sees. “The natural light is unbelievable,” he says. “The landscapes become visceral: the shapes, the geology take on forms when the light is really dim.”
Of course, the moon is full once each month, and Landi can't be somewhere cool every time it happens. The moon is no less beautiful over the Big Apple, but it's not the same. “When I don’t manage to go somewhere and just see a full moon in New York, I think, damn, I could’ve been somewhere else,” he says. Luckily, there’s always next month.
