Interview
Excerpt from a public discussion on the occasion of the exhibition opening
IM ZWISCHEN 19.10.2012 in the SDW Berlin-Neukölln
Dirk Wieschollek: Your photographs often draw attention to very inconspicuous things. To situations, to spaces of everyday life. Always very situative, very in-the-blink-of-an-eye. We see abstract lines, surfaces, odd details, through views, spatial constellations that bring forth a wide openness and ambiguity. Was this openness and ambiguity one of the main impulses of your work?
Frank Schlegel: There is no elaborated concept that I came up with in advance and then realized photographically. It’s much more like so: I’m affected by a situation, by a view-point, and then this photo happens.
All of these images are very familiar to me and close, because I’ve seen them hundreds of times. I can however imagine that for a viewer seeing them for the first time there’s something strange about them. And actually, that’s what I’m after, a kind of friction that is produced here.
But yet there is another aspect: The photo often draws attention to a place, a situation, a constellation that you generally would never look at consciously. And maybe that’s precisely the puzzling character that you mentioned. It’s also always about the question: Can there be, today, when we are inundated in all imaginable places with images, which we hardly even consciously “see”, can there be photos that put on the brakes? Where we don’t just continue rushing ahead, but we stop and then perhaps ask: Wait, what’s that then? This braking moment, and the resulting friction, is integral to my work.
But all that is only in relation to the functional or hermeneutic aspect of photography, meaning the issue of what way and how understanding or not understanding is initiated for the observer. In the photo, though, it’s also about a “what”. What is shown, what am I seeing, really? Thereby, visibility and invisibility play into each other. There is always something in the photo – to some extent a background – that doesn’t appear itself. Which in the end is what it’s all about! But it’s something you can’t really talk about.
Excerpt from a public discussion on the occasion of the exhibition opening
IM ZWISCHEN 19.10.2012 in the SDW Berlin-Neukölln
Dirk Wieschollek: Your photographs often draw attention to very inconspicuous things. To situations, to spaces of everyday life. Always very situative, very in-the-blink-of-an-eye. We see abstract lines, surfaces, odd details, through views, spatial constellations that bring forth a wide openness and ambiguity. Was this openness and ambiguity one of the main impulses of your work?
Frank Schlegel: There is no elaborated concept that I came up with in advance and then realized photographically. It’s much more like so: I’m affected by a situation, by a view-point, and then this photo happens.
All of these images are very familiar to me and close, because I’ve seen them hundreds of times. I can however imagine that for a viewer seeing them for the first time there’s something strange about them. And actually, that’s what I’m after, a kind of friction that is produced here.
But yet there is another aspect: The photo often draws attention to a place, a situation, a constellation that you generally would never look at consciously. And maybe that’s precisely the puzzling character that you mentioned. It’s also always about the question: Can there be, today, when we are inundated in all imaginable places with images, which we hardly even consciously “see”, can there be photos that put on the brakes? Where we don’t just continue rushing ahead, but we stop and then perhaps ask: Wait, what’s that then? This braking moment, and the resulting friction, is integral to my work.
But all that is only in relation to the functional or hermeneutic aspect of photography, meaning the issue of what way and how understanding or not understanding is initiated for the observer. In the photo, though, it’s also about a “what”. What is shown, what am I seeing, really? Thereby, visibility and invisibility play into each other. There is always something in the photo – to some extent a background – that doesn’t appear itself. Which in the end is what it’s all about! But it’s something you can’t really talk about.
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