REFLECTIONS ON MY PHOTOGRAPHS 1: BEGINNINGS

1. Why Photography
2. What Photography
3. Origins and Influences
4. Theme: Story
5. Theme: Visuals
6. Organizing

I'm a rather visual person. I don't quite crave for large sums of written text, which may be quite ironic as I seem to like writing large texts, and as I'm also quite fond of literature and language in general. But I'm more of an abstract person, or a very specific one. I don't like to be specific on a grand scheme. I like analyzing small portions of text, large ones however simply take too long. Large and long things I tend to grasp in an abstract or more general way, combining all senses. I just dislike reading a long novel over days or months, I don't even have the concentration for it. A movie, however, has a precise start and end point, you can make detail analysis, and you can experience it with lots more senses and under much more aspects than a book. There's music, photography, lighting, effects, story, acting, whatever. Some things you cannot grasp logically, you can just feel them. You can look at them, delve into the situation, and then - less consciously even - you either get it or not, but mostly on a non-cerebral and more emotional level.

A picture doesn't necessarily come with a wordy explanation. In that, it's more like poetry than prose. Prose tends to at least follow some conventional modes of narration, poetry however is more obscure, relies more on the emotional than the logical side. Yet poetry is something I've been doing for quite some time now, I'm planning to continue writing it, but somehow I'm also craving for something completely else. Or rather, not completely. The essence, detail and abstract, is still there, yet the medium is different.

Taking photos is something I can remember having done almost for ever, photography however is something new to me, still is after hundreds of pictures. That partly comes from experimenting, finding a style and obsession, losing it again, finding something new etc. It also comes from trying to incorporate old material under a new agenda. But basically, it's still a great experiment, I don't know what'll come from it, it's just a big new something waiting there to be explored. A toy, if you may, to sate my childish and manly (which I believe to be the same most of the time) needs for playing.

It could also be something else, like music for instant. I've been experimenting with that also, even for much longer than I've been doing anything else, but it hasn't yet yielded any real results, maybe it will in the future. Movies are another thing, but far more complex and far too distant for me right now. Photography is the smallest of my additional interests beside text that I can afford right now to indulge in.

What purpose does photography carry? What am I doing it for? Honestly, I don't know. I could invent some big, easy agenda, but basically, it's a visual interest, and it is more emotional than rational. Of course, you want to make some utterance with what you show or make. But art is too plentifold to just restrict it by labeling it in a unidirectional way. A picture - as any piece of art - has the ability to tell every different viewer something completely different. So maybe it's just about creating material for reflection, contemplation, meditation. Maybe it's just attempting to hit a nerve or trigger a thought or idea or memory, maybe it's something different. As I've already said, I'm more of an abstract person. I like to abstract from the concrete and let the so-called meaning transcend to a different level.

Thus I won't attempt to analyze or even interpret or thoroughly explain here what my intentions are. I wouldn't even if I knew what they were. A certain portion of obscurity has to remain. What I'm about to contemplate upon right here, right now, is just charting the territory, giving some variables and thinking that may be useful or at least interesting for approaching my work. The focus of this text is also to say something about art in general, my own will be the example at hand here. Just understand it as a kind of making-of, or what it says in the heading: some reflections on my photographs.

August 16th, 2001

I'm not a very technical person. Technical details don't really interest me for their own sake, I'm only interested in what works best, and what equipment can provide me with the best results. Technology for me is a means to achieve an end, nothing more. It's nice to know all these little facts, but as long as the thing works and isn't too heavily outdated, I don't really care.

Thus my first attempts have been made with pretty simple cameras, a rather primitive black and white one in the beginning, a children's camera perhaps. Then I moved to a more expensive tourist camera with zoom and automatic focus, something simple that allows me to take a quick shot and then move on. That model has become too primitive for three reasons now: I don't really see what the picture will look like, experimenting with lots of shots becomes pretty expensive, and the scanning process for the internet makes most pictures look awful. Thus it had to be a better digital camera (SONY DSC-F505V), not too primitive, yet also not one of those bulky and hyper-expensive professional cameras which then would make everything more expensive again, in terms of film material and developing etc.

As I'm interested in the picture as such, and in making it available to others, the chosen format for exhibition is the internet, here I have almost complete freedom, and the costs for everything are minimal. Paper images are not my prime motivation, I don't need that. A screen serves perfectly for what I want. Thus from a mere technical point of view, what I'm doing now is something like digital internet photography mostly in a 4:3 screen format, in terms of geometry somewhere between normal tourist photography and middle format. But as I've already said, that's rather secondary to me.

Regarding the motifs and themes, the objects I shoot, I'm relatively open. I've been doing landscape and cities mostly, now having moved towards architecture and structural details, also incorporating some images of people. Yet I'm not quite into portrait (yet).

How artistic is it supposed to be? I try to follow a line somewhere between a documentary perspective coming from a touristic agenda, showing people something "nice" or interesting, and a more abstract, or hyper-specific approach (which I regard as closely related) photographing things a normal observer would never care about, but things which are there, things usually left out from the narrative. Thus I'd say that I'm caught somewhere between a romantic and a naturalist approach, balancing the two consciously to somehow serve my internet audience.

I strongly detest most forms of fancy manipulation or distortion of "reality". I still am aiming for a documentary approach, showing "what's there", what is seen by the naked lense. I do favor color, yet I've come to be more and more interested in black and white photography. So you'll probably see more of the latter from now on. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, I still have to figure them out. Nothing is finished, the future yet unwritten.

August 16th, 2001

As with my poems also, I don't quite know how to root my photography. Especially as photography is not necessarily as prominently perceived as such, as an art form, as it is constantly being underestimated by the general public in favor of romantic and realistic painting; photography is commonly conceived as something cheap rather, something less of an art form, something less requiring artistic abilities. Ergo, it is less made a topic, even less taught in schools, and to someone who arrives at it from outside the artistic community, someone like me, it's really difficult to say what my influences are.

To name influences would be to name artists, photographers who have left a certain impact on myself, photographers whose work I would have consciously perceived as such. These are but a few, and I could just name people like David Lynch, who is known rather for his films than his other artwork, or change the field and quote painters like Casper David Friedrich for the romantic touch and artists like Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein for the portrayal of commercial culture. More obvious it would be to refer to my few contacts with contemporary artists, like Lucas Fester (trafalgar.de) and even more Jörn Lies (timescapes.de), a close friend of mine, and - regarding photography - some kind of an adviser, perhaps even a mentor in a way, someone who has definitely encouraged me to do some photography also.

The influence I get through my fascination for movies and television shows should also not be underestimated, in that I feel indebted to such great artistic endeavors as Chris Carter's The X-Files for its stylish and amazing visual atmosphere, and David Lynch, again, for redefining beauty and mixing it with the sublime.

But the greatest influence I would see in philosophy and aesthetics, mostly in reflecting about beauty and sublimity, things I also do in my poems, especially starting with "Klimax". The same discourse is carried over to my photography, and brought to a different level I hope.

But to be honest, I really don't know if any such references are helpful. I don't quite have found a definite style yet, maybe I don't even want to and had better continue experimenting and doing lots of different stuff, not wanting to restrict myself in any unnecessary way, but I certainly owe thanks to above mentioned people and pieces of art.

August 16th, 2001

Every picture tells a story, they say. Indeed it does. However, what that story would be, can be very ambiguous with photography. Of course you can provide a photograph with an according description and theme, but I'm very careful with that. I tend towards more abstract titles and loose concepts, to also allow for a greater variety and an increased possibility for interpretation. The stories I actively attribute to my pictures can rather be drawn from the way I organize them into groups and categories, the framing, so to say, sets the premise.

If you take Earth as an example, the focus seems rather restricted: What I show is earth. That category is set into the group of Elements, both introducing variations on the classical elements as well as some basic elements of my visual storytelling[1]. That being said, each of the pictures now stands both on its own as well as it is rooted in the larger context of its respective category resp. series. There is a certain development in that series, starting with what I described in poem #141, "White" - which is the core definition of what I look for in the entire group of Elements[2]:

"And beyond, below it all -
Earth so screaming, frozen, stiff"

The series then moves to plain earth, in color variations (2), then unicolored in perspective (3), then with the element of water and reflections of trees introduced (4), fuzzy (5) and straight (6) structures and a more askew angle and perspective (7) added, the last one being linked to the fourth of the Spirit category. The combinations of themes thus becomes important in here, and will be of even greater importance in all subsequent groups.

What "message" now is an image of plain earth to tell? May I refer back to that poem? Or should I utter an ecological message, or an agricultural one? I feel it not only quite superfluous but also dangerously restricting to impose such a limited "meaning" on such a picture. Art doesn't come with preposterous agendas attached. Then I could write an essay on ecology or agriculture or industrialization or whatever. The purpose of art is precisely this inherent diversity of interpretation, this other-than-obvious level. That must not be explained away, and it can't be - all explanations on my side may sound interesting, but they are just my personal opinion anyway. The object discovered by me (a term I would prefer over "created") is now detached from me, it has become discourse as much as it has been created by discourse, for the artist is merely the medium through which inspiration finds her way. The author, in the function of the omnipotent, omniscient creator, is dead. So, what competence could I possibly have[3]?

August 16th, 2001

August 16th, 2001

With elements I came to a point where I soon had to realize that it became too much, too repetitive at a stage. Trees and Structures had become way too large, with lots of unnecessary shots in the middle, especially fall/winter footage from Park Babelsberg in Potsdam. The choice now had to be one of two things: Crop and cut it, which had occured to me, and I actually started with it, but then discarded that option. The other was to simply discontinue with it, leave it as it was, and start something new.

The old material was chosen to remain on the site, for a particular reason. Yes, there may be stuff in there I would want to cut under other conditions. But this is a web site, not a written publication nor a cinematic production. A web site actually provides you with the opportunity to make it kind of an archive of material, it can be rather experimental. A web site is always a work in progress. Nothing really is finished in whole, just in parts, and the old material does tell something about me, about finding my way in certain fields, be it photography, poetry, essays, reviews, whatever. So from a thorough academic, journalistic and documentary approach (don't forget I'm also a historian), it makes sense to let all this stuff linger on my site, accessible, somehow guided by the selections I offer.

Thus the category of "Selections from my Photographs" had to come up at one time, necessary both for Elements and Voyages, two groups which had outgrown any natural limitations of size. Places I tried to leave smaller, and more selective. But the selections became an utter necessity for my old stuff. If you want others to be able to see everything, but not necessarily stumbling upon the bad stuff in the first place, you need to guide their choices. Thus access still was made possible, yet more obscured, and the option of browsing through some selections first occured to me to be the best way to introduce my work, and leave the observer with the choice to dig deeper if they wanted.

August 16th, 2001

Endnotes