Noah Beil- Mountain As Monument

The intense bombing of World War II left the streets of many European cities clogged with the remains of demolished masonry buildings. In Berlin alone, over 45 million cubic meters of debris were cleared during post-war rebuilding efforts. After intact bricks were recovered for reuse, with much of the manual labor performed by women, waste materials were transported to distributed collection locations and piled into hills known in German as Schuttberg or Trümmerberg. Today, these debris hills in Berlin are difficult to distinguish from naturally occurring features as they have been landscaped into parks with manicured grass and densely vegetated sections. They provide an opportunity to study mankind’s reshaping and repurposing of the landscape, as well as the effects of natural reclamation on anthropogenic terrain alterations.

Noah was born in Spokane, Washington, and has lived in Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, and Rhode Island. He received a BA from Brown University and is currently based in Oakland, CA. His landscape and architectural photography explores mankind's interaction with the earth's surface. Utilizing geographic information systems, satellite imagery, and GPS technology, he examines intentional and accidental alterations of the landscape, explores spatial relationships between landforms, vegetation, and structures, and compares natural and artificial landscape features.