“the further the horizon appears”

Exhibition in the context of the International Photoscene Cologne, 26.8.-9.9.2016.

In my new works from 2015/16, I draw on elementary processes of photography such as photograms and pinhole camera photography. The magic underlying these artistically traditional, decelerated techniques is used to create and condense pictorial worlds. In the process, great importance is attached to the factor of chance as well as to the factor of time during exposure, because just like the photogram, the pinhole camera image eludes the controlling gaze through a lens and the capturing of a section of the image in fractions of a second.
Experimentation as well as experience and the access to a large pool of materials determine in the realization of my daylight photograms the line between image-likeness and possibilities of creative intervention in the hour-long exposure process. In the further image generation analog darkroom technique, under non-observance of the usual procedure (the pictures are partly held only with fixer), is further formally implemented with digital possibilities.
The photograms created in contact and thus drawn by light and shadow, adapted to a creative interpretation, seem poetic and imaginary with their bizarre colorfulness and transparency. Silhouettes and traces of vegetal forms, in their inventory partly resembling a herbarium, materialize on the paper through light and emphasize their archaic beauty and uniqueness.
Cell-like structures of light and shadow, stripped of their visual surface stimuli and a perspective representation, become an abstract play of forms and surfaces. Diffuse and concrete at the same time, the auratic afterimages appear. Formations from a world of appearances irritate the notion of the visible, reveal a mysterious, alchemical atmosphere and open up new, associative spaces.
Through long exposure times with the pinhole camera, movement becomes stillness. The color surfaces and dissolved structures become images of a passage through time. The slowed-down gaze concentrates on the traditional artistic theme of the “sea” and is focused on the horizon, where the elements meet, as if through a telescope.
With the primitive forms of image recording and the digital means of the 21st century, the connection between past and present, photographic processes are themselves made into image content. Light-imaging processes are brought into consciousness and explored experimentally. Today’s ubiquitous photographic image production is countered by the conscious process of image making with the exploration of its possibilities. In addition to this material-sensual level, the creative interpretation and reception of photographic images are addressed.
Barbara Haiduck, July 2016