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California: The Dream Factory, land of Counterculture & Innovation. There is no other landscape in the USA that has shaped several generations of mass culture just like California has. In his new series CALIFORN-IR, Simon Puschmann devotes himself to infrared photography and offers the viewer an exciting and at the same time disruptive perspective into contemporary California. The age of the Anthropocene has been discussed in the arts for some time. It describes the human impact on the environment that is geologically visible. Light pollution, pollution of the oceans, consumption of resources, and high emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have become evident and have inscribed themselves on the face of the earth. With his CALIFORN-IRseries, Puschmann shows how it can be possible to make a valuable discursive contribution to contemporary art with sophisticated photographic means and an artistic flair, which not only artfully entertains the viewer with a new, unusual view of its beauty, but also almost indiscreetly pointing out the ecological consequences. In this, Puschmann was successful in creating images of ambivalent beauty.