cloud in a room
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This artist makes clouds appear in unexpected places

With the air as his canvas, a Dutch artist applies water vapor, smoke, lighting—and conjures clouds in surprising settings.

Berndnaut Smilde creates clouds to photograph in odd places—here, in China’s Shanghai Himalayas Museum—using smoke and mist machines. (He retouches the images so the tools aren’t seen.)
Photograph By Nina Chen
ByDaniel Stone
4 min read
This story appears in the March 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Berndnaut Smilde creates fluffy clouds in locations where nature never would place them. The Dutch artist’s sculptures last five seconds—10 seconds tops—before they disappear.

Smilde’s ongoing project, called “Nimbus,” explores the visual effects of clouds. A church or museum interior looks different behind a cloud, and an everyday cloud is peculiar in a castle or a canyon. Each scene is made more intense by lasting only moments.

cloud in a building

Smilde's creations in gallery spaces include a sky-grazing cloud at the De Groen Fine Art Collection in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CASSANDER EEFTINCK SCHATTENKERK
a cloud in a room
Ornate settings include such places as the Green Room in the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center.
Photograph By R.J. Muna
a cloud created in space
The artist’s creations in gallery spaces include a low-hanging cloud in the Visual arts center in Carlow, Ireland.
Photograph By Michael Holly
cloud in a building
Smilde’s settings can also be spare, such as the Hotel Maria Kapel exhibition space in Hoorn, the Netherlands.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CASSANDER EEFTINCK SCHATTENKERK

The ingredients for Smilde’s clouds: just smoke and water vapor. He requires a cold and damp space with no air circulation, lest the clouds never form or fall straight to the ground. He mists an area with a spray bottle to put water vapor into the air. Then he turns on fog machines that spout tiny particles, and the vapor condenses around them.

Smilde runs around the forming cloud, coaxing it into a shape about 10 feet across and six feet tall. Then he steps back long enough for a photographer to snap several images. Once the air clears, he’ll start over, repeating the process dozens of times until he’s happy with the results. Later, he’ll retouch the photos to remove his tools.

photographer capturing the cloud created in a building
In Cologne, Germany, a cloud hovers in the Sankt Peter Köln, a late Gothic church that’s also used as a center for spirituality, art, and music.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CASSANDER EEFTINCK SCHATTENKERK
a man photographing a cloud inside an old museum
Photographer Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk captures an image of a cloud that Smilde created in the Baths of Diocletian, part of the National Roman Museum.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ANNEGRET KELLNER

The artist regularly fields invitations to create clouds on command, like a tropospheric party trick. Often he declines. He says he only attempts new images when the setting offers him something fresh as an artist. To him, the crucial takeaway is not the wonder of a fabricated cloud but its transience—that it exists for a moment and then is gone forever.

Each creation is “about being at the right place at the right time,” Smilde says. “If you’re seeing a photo, you already missed it.”

See more of Smilde's unique creations here.

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