Landscapes dwarf the individual. The magnificent structures we build to shape the landscape to our own liking seem futile in the face of the majesty that Nature, or God, has created. Günther Komnick takes us to Syria, for example and to Jordan, where we can see the valiant attempts to defy landscape, even to compete with it. The pyramids of Egypt, the precarious setting of Machu Picchu in the Urubamba valley in Peru, Palmyra at once seem to defy Nature and yet are hewn out of Nature. God’s own architecture we see in the geomorphological wonders of the Arizona and Utah deserts, and Namibia - the sentinels of the earth’s majesty in the form of inselbergs and the shaping of the earth by glaciers long gone. In this immensity humans have tried and succeeded in leaving their mark, as if to master and shape the environment they have inherited. And transitory though human impact is, it also leaves the viewer in awe of the ingenuity and vision of the people who built structures amid an often unforgiving landscape, hoping that their attempts o tame the earth will enjoy the longevity of that which surrounds them.