“Everyone on social media was focused on guys from the States, or Canada.”
Johannes Höhn was frustrated. He viewed image sharing sites as dominated by Americans, by the American gaze, and filled with landscapes that he was convinced his own country could best in beauty. He wanted to “get Germany on the map” by building a community around appreciation of the German countryside and forests, while promoting European creatives. This idea developed nearly four years ago into the current “German Roamers” consortium of photographers after Höhn, a.k.a. @pangea, brainstormed with Johannes Becker, @hannes_becker, with whom he’d formed an Instagram friendship.
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“This kid is just showing German nature and it looks incredible,” says Höhn, 31, of Becker, 24. “So we met up for a weekend in the woods—just headed out to take photos in the area—and really quickly I realized that this is my thing.”
Höhn traces his fever for photography to his childhood, and analog: “I fell in love with photography when I found out about the existence of bokeh,” Höhn shares with AdoramaTV. “I saw some old photos my dad took in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I was amazed by the look of the images with a blurred background.” Now grown up and with his own gear, he relies on a Sony A9 with a Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens, and accomplishes “99 percent” of edits in Adobe Lightroom.
Becker’s passion is however entirely digital. Growing up in a tiny German town of only 200 inhabitants, he sought to literally and figuratively broaden his horizons. He downloaded Instagram and was hooked.
Now with followings numbering more than 207,000 for Höhn, 1.1 million for Becker, and 212,000 for the German Roamers circle totaling 15 photographers, they’re also growing their subjects. The focus is no longer exclusively German landscapes, and this summer the Roamers shared shots from Iceland, Austria, and Norway, with an occasional sprinkling of breathtaking nature from further afield (do not miss Höhn’s image of New Zealand breathing fire).
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German Roamers also welcomes non-Germans to join in via Insta-hikes and community events. Many of these are even sponsored, as with August’s sojourn in Saarland, presented by Urlaub in Saarland, the board representing the smallest German state, notched into Germany’s western border with Luxembourg and France.
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Don’t tell his German Roamers friends, but the destination that has most surprised Höhn with its beauty is the Faroe Islands, admitting his shock to AdoramaTV: “I was blown away by how crazy nice this place was in reality! You could simply stroll around and shoot on every corner. Endless possibilities and super interesting conditions that change by the minute.”
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For photographers looking to explore the home turf of German Roamers, Höhn does have some suggestions. Making his list are the hills and popular climbing terrains of Saxon Switzerland National Park in the east, the wilderness of Eifel National Park in the west, and the dramatic peaks of the Allgäu Alps in the South.
As well as Germans know these places, the international community still leans on a stereotypical impression of the country as a land of gingerbread-cute architecture, overflowing beer steins, and Christmas markets hawking bratwurst. You won’t find any of these things in the German Roamers feed, but you will find inspiration beyond the Autobahn and imagery of a truly picturesque country captured not by tourists, but by those who know it best.
