Landweg in Kärnten, Mai 1957

Toni Schneiders's photographs isolate abstract forms and patterns found in nature. In 1949, Schneiders and a number of other German photographers formed the Fotoform group, which spawned the Subjektive Fotografie movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His image of a bicyclist on a serpentine stretch of road is characteristic of the group's emphasis on daring black-and-white images that verge on almost total abstraction. Schneiders was clearly fascinated by the tendency of the aerial view to simplify the details of the landscape into graphic patterns and turn the distant figure into a dark speck on the bright ribbon of pavement.