Kudzu. The word alone carries a heft, conjuring a relentless green tide, a creeping force that swallows all in its path. Known as “the vine that ate the South,” it’s more than a plant, it’s a myth, a quiet conqueror reshaping the American South’s landscapes and lore. In Kudzu, Sabine Bungert and Stefan Dolfen weave a photobook that doesn’t just document this invader, it pulls you into its embrace. Published by The Velvet Cell, it’s a haunting immersion into a world where nature’s slow, stubborn strength drapes everything in a verdant shroud, equal parts mesmerising and menacing.

From the first page, an eerie hush settles in, a dreamlike stillness that’s not empty but alive with tension. This isn’t a book about people, not directly. It’s about what lingers, what’s buried, when nature runs unchecked. The most arresting images are those of human relics devoured: an RV park where only white rooftops poke through a sea of foliage like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard; a roadside toilet block standing primly normal, while behind it, kudzu surges like an emerald wave, poised to crash over civilisation. These shots teeter between beauty and ruin, the picturesque and the apocalyptic, a balance Bungert and Dolfen wield with a deft, quiet grace.

That RV Park image hooked me deep. As someone who’s long been captivated by kudzu’s silent aggression, its knack for erasing what we build, it’s a stunner. The plant doesn’t just surround; it consumes. Those rooftops, barely breaching the green, hint at lives once lived beneath: a caravan’s rusting frame, a family’s holiday dreams, now lost to the vine’s grip. What’s under there? A cracked tarmac? A families abandoned belongings? Growing up in Aberdeen, where the North Sea gnaws at cliffs and granite weathers every storm, I know that pull of nature’s reclaiming hand. Here, it’s not the sea but kudzu, rewriting the tale in leaves and tendrils, leaving mysteries that itch at the soul.

Then there’s the car park scene, a slice of everyday order teetering on chaos. Cars line up neatly, a public loo stands proud, all mundane as a Monday morning. But looming over the back wall, kudzu waits. It climbs, it stretches, it hungers. The contrast grips you: the familiar calm of a small-town moment against the wild, inevitable spill of green. It’s lush, cascading in thick waves, a wall of life so vibrant it’s almost hypnotic. Yet there’s a shiver beneath, how long before it spills over? How long before this pocket of normalcy vanishes? It’s a whisper of the thistle-strewn hills round Aberdeen, where nature’s tenacity feels both kin and threat.

Kudzu’s story is as tangled as its vines. Brought from Asia to the U.S. in 1876 for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, it was later hailed as a fix for soil erosion during the Great Depression. Farmers were paid to sow it, a gift turned curse. Its spread spiralled beyond control, smothering trees, engulfing buildings, rewriting ecosystems, an ecological rogue now etched into the South’s identity. There’s poetry in its havoc, a terrible beauty in how it thrives where others falter. As a Scotsman, I feel a kinship with such rebels. Our thistle, prickly, dismissed, yet fiercely symbolic, mirrors kudzu’s grit. Growing 30 centimetres a day, it’s a marvel of persistence, a survivor I can’t help but admire, even as it chokes what lies beneath.

Beyond ecology, kudzu’s a cultural phantom in the South, a metaphor for runaway growth, human folly, the wild’s upper hand. It haunts literature, music, art, and now this book. Bungert and Dolfen don’t just snap pictures; they spin a tale. Their images murmur of lost worlds, ghost towns draped in green, histories swallowed whole. It’s the kind of storytelling I chase in my own lens, inspired by the photobooks lining my shelves, from Tulsa’s raw edge to Flowers Drink the River’s patient gaze. Here, kudzu’s the narrator, its silence louder than words.

This book lingers like mist on Aberdeen’s cobbles. Its pages hum with a stillness found in forsaken places, the quiet of a world moving on while nature digs in. There’s a pang of loss in these frames, a sense of landscapes surrendered. Yet there’s wonder, too. Kudzu doesn’t just take; it transforms. Trees turn to cloaked figures, old sheds to organic relics. It’s not the world it found, but it’s a strange, gripping new one. Flipping through, I’m reminded of childhood rambles through overgrown quarries near home, nature’s slow reclaiming felt less like defeat and more like a reimagining.

Bungert and Dolfen craft a work that’s both caution and ode. Kudzu testifies to nature’s resilience, a visual probe into what happens when we tip the scales too far. It’s a nudge that the wild never bends fully to our will, pour concrete, carve roads, and still, it creeps back. For me, it’s personal. In Aberdeen, where the sea and wind shape everything, I’ve seen nature’s quiet defiance. Kudzu’s just louder about it.

If you’re drawn, like me, to the tales landscapes whisper, the beauty of the overgrown, the pull of the abandoned, this book’s a must. It nails that tightrope between awe and unease, wonder and warning. Kudzu’s a weed, sure, but in these pages, it’s an artist, sculpting a world that’s haunting, breathtaking, and stubbornly alive. There’s poetry in that, a green curtain drawn across the past, daring us to peek behind.

Regards,

Alex