As the Eye Wanders pdf
Given light back to shadows
Photography has become one of the most universal of all languages. Many artists, philosophers and scientists, past and present, agree that we can only live and think in images. They situate our understanding of the world. Photography, as the visual language we have become familiar with, proves to be particularly suitable for expressing moods, emotions and complex experiences.
On Passages long before
When we take photographs, we look for a vantage point, writes Vilém Flusser, from which someone else can see the world as we ourselves see it. We wish to have someone there who sees with his eyes. This is also true when we put together series of images and refer to something John Berger calls the „bricolage of the soul.“ It describes the movement of the eyes following the light and thus the balance of lines, colors and tones.
This is not a dream
Photography does not create images, rather it finds them. It is more than Roland Barthes‘ definition of the noema. It is a finding of form between reality and the past in a constant expansion of what we conceive as reality. In the close investigation of some details and certain moments we discover things that had been lost or forgotten. And as we look at the details of those images, they suddenly become familiar again, like a reference to archetypical scenes from a time long past – then, just as suddenly, they become a mystery once again.
Turning time around
In most of the picture series, the color blue appears in various hues as a common unifying element of experiences and impressions. Of all colors, the color blue, which is particularly dependent on environment and conditions, proves to be volatile and radical. Cultural attributions point to its relation to heaven, death, and the beyond, and to innocence, despair, and hope.
I have seen the nature of trees at last
Memory and perception are interwoven at different levels: while perception mirrors the premises of the outside world, memory reflects the world within. As an essential medium and metaphor of mediation, photography anchors and communicates perception and memory. And as such it triggers an infinite chain of associations that challenge the photographer’s eye and the viewer’s imagination to see how various forms in a picture and in series transform time into rhythm.
Blue nots in many keys
The perception of fragmented worlds and the technique of photography to capture moments correspond to each other in a congenial way. While during the act of photographing feelings of urgency and the desire for belonging come to life, the search for distance, for patterns that are stabilizing and yet not rigid, is equally present. The edition and sequencing of the photographs can also reveal surprising perspectives on how images find resonance through images.
Dealing with forms that trigger moments of true evidence – including fractures and abysses – can go hand in hand with experiencing a consistent whole, i.e. with recognizing a secret affinity between disparate things. Especially the visually coherent compositions, multilayered and seemingly simple, contribute to this by giving the world of images a temporary order.
Photography takes on one of its central roles when it brings sociopolitical conditions into focus and expresses existential concerns. It thus locates and deepens our understanding of the world through the photographic-optical means, as well as through visual metaphors and poetic attributions.
In: Rosemarie Zens, As the Eye Wanders, Berlin 2017