|
Basic philosophy
Berlin 1989 - 2007 „Pictures from two millennia“.
Photos by Guenther Schaefer
Foreword
of the book by the author
“Why do you take
pictures?“ someone asked me during an exhibition opening. I answered:
“because I was forced as a printer to work on millions of low-grade
photographs by other people for years, my own vision of photography developed
in the meantime. I couldn’t act any differently!“ This is indeed true. Well,
almost. “Can photography be considered art?“ was the next insidious question.
This time I countered using philosophical means: “Art in a literal sense does
not exist, only so-called artists, masochists who do certain things
compulsively. They are not able to act any differently. Sometimes, they’re
even happy with it. Then again society has created the metaphor of “art” for
the products of these strange activities. If this particular society is
unable to master such an odd character, they will hang his pictures, instead
of him, for example in museums. You see - there is life after the cut-off
ear. But! First the pain - then the fame. The product of strange compulsive
activity, now raised to the status of an opus, along with its creator, can be
made a show of and be presented to an astonished crowd without further
consideration. Museums are our culture’s zoological
gardens,
the galleries - their outdoor enclosures!“ Is this my serious opinion? Well,
almost, though admittedly
with some winking.
Photographers
create their own reality by detecting unique perspectives, which only their
eye, their camera is able to evoke and thus freeze an elusive trace of contemporary
history.
Not infrequently, in the middle of thousands of witnesses of the same incident,
with thousands upon thousands of individual sensory impressions. If the
photographer decides to release the shutter, a time that is never to return
leaves its fingerprint on the negative. If the decision to publish the photo
is made, the subjective reality of the photographer turns into the reality of
the viewer, inseparably
connected to the moment that is captured in the picture. Symbolically,
photographers’ very own perceptions do not belong to them alone; they are now
shared with others. In the most positive sense, these processes have an
effect as long as the results of their creation remained unaffected by the
interests of potential customers or editors.
- Is
photography art? -
The medium of
photography has the power to destroy illusions, just like those of some
“concrete heads” who, in their misty-eyed addiction to nostalgia, even today
still long to see the socialism once practiced in reality “re-socialized.“
The medium of photography can nourish hope despite all the oscillations of
history. It is also the case with me, a “hopeless” optimist, one of those who
have to do certain things, without being able to act any differently, and are
sometimes happy this way. Especially, when an extremely intense topic
approaches and not vice-versa.
“Life is what
happens while you're busy making other plans.“ (Henry Miller)
We now come
to the concept for this volume of photographs, which deals with the last
decade at the close of the century and the first years of the new millennium.
Matured in a seventeen-year-long work with the camera in the history-filled
streets of Berlin. As artistic
means only black and white material has been used, a reduction made in order
to focus on the substance of the content without any optical source of
confusion. Working in black and white to me is tantamount to a photographic
“making a clean breast of it.“
Starting in
those fateful days in November 1989, when a people, accompanied by a global
clap of thunder, overcame their walls, I too was drawn into the maelstrom of euphoria
caused by the German-German events. Still today, I am unable to resist the
echo of this time, with all its “side noises.“ This project reaches its preliminary
climax in 2004, the year of the fifteenth anniversary of November 9th, the
opening of the Wall.
It is at its
origin, the area around the Brandenburg Gate, though under totally modified
social conditions, that the wheel of this visual odyssey through the
metropolis that once again wrote world history, and this time a history that
was finally positive, comes full circle.
A
photographic opus, created by one hand, made with nothing but pure emotion as
its mainspring, can and will not claim documentary completeness. Other
publications on this topic may do so in the future.
As far as the
content is concerned, major events alternate with rather quiet themes of no
lesser meaning; basic philosophical ideas, aesthetic points of view,
historical junctions and political facets complement one another in the
selection of the pictures. What pulls all of the images together is the
serial effect, which is only made possible by the passing of time.
During the
work on this project, I dove again and again into “time travel“ through the
archiving of my “subjective reality,“ and realized with astonishment that I
wasn’t the same man that I used to be in the days of the fall of 1989. The
city, the country, the world had changed (developed?), and the pictures made
the general social as well as my very own personal metamorphosis more
apparent.
Photos, which
already then belonged to my circle of favorites, still move me today. Yet, it
is their meaning, their interpretation that has shifted over time. Other
images, however, ones that had not been looked at for years and yet been kept in the shadowy depths of an
archive, suddenly turned into basic pillars for the whole concept.
Through
continuously documenting the same places and recurring events, that is,
through creating a series in which the individuals or the traces they leave
are at the center of the world of pictures, it becomes possible to call upon
any inherent memory potential in manifold ways. In additional, it is this
book’s particular intention to filter the individual out of the mass, by
means of the focus of the camera, and put them into a context with each
other.
The long-term
photographic observation you hold in your hands, a synthesis of art,
documentation, journalism, and moreover pure joy in the work with this
exiting medium, should also be seen as a reflection of events of days that
can never be repeated. Furthermore, may this work also serve as a reminder
for recent world history and inspire a vivid dialogue with the viewer /
reader on question of peace and international
understanding.
Berlin, the former border of the world in the flux of time fixed with
the camera, its most symbolic places, so deeply rooted in a global
consciousness as a historic focus, recorded in light and shadow, like a
visual notation of “The times they are a changing“, a score dictated by contemporary
history.
-Think while
you look, look while you think!-
Günther Schaefer
HOME
|