MAREN LÜBBKE-TIDOW

Annette Kelm: We Don’t Really Know What We’re Seeing: Photographing Photographing

With the title given to her editorial work in this issue, “Belichtung und Farbwerte / Exposure and Chromaticity”, Annette Kelm lays a pathway for reading the contributions she has organised, which all involve the question of photographers’ concrete activity. Less obviously associated with “Exposure and Chromaticity” is the question of thinking about photography or photographic images—at least not in a way that would perhaps be considered typical for this publication context. Kelm takes a very logical approach by placing step one before step two. Situated against a discursive backdrop is a substantiated technical positing of channels of photographic agents through which an image is generated in the first place. Or is it the other way around? Where does thinking about the photographic image originate? With questions related to technical-mediatic access, with the production process, or with an existing image that finds a context? Of course it is impossible to adequately answer this question, for the spaces of conceptual preformulation, the spaces of origination, and the spaces of viewing intertwine. Annette Kelm, with her title, inverts precisely that which makes the beholding of her photographs so brilliant—a space for contemplating her photographic agency. Yet with this inversion, she navigates directly into such a conceptual arena with questions about fundamental decisions related to the (apparatus-focused) treatment of the medium—like in a flat where all rooms are interconnected and the first room is simultaneously the last.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 131/2015, pp. 7–13.

Guest Editor
ANNETTE KELM

Belichtung und Farbwerte / Exposure and Chromaticity
Shannon Ebner
Sabine Reitmaier
Morgan Fisher
Judith Hopf
Horst P. Horst
Josephine Pryde
Louis Ducos du Hauron
Michael Schmidt
Barbara Kasten
Henrik Olesen
Sylvia Sleigh
Christopher Williams
David Lieske
Jan Groover
Arthur Ou
Dirk von Lowtzow
Lucie Stahl
Herbert Tobias

HENDRIK SCHWANTES

Hans Hansen in Conversation with Hendrik Schwantes: The Studio

Hendrik Schwantes    Hans, from the 1960s to the 1990s you photographed quite a few advertising campaigns for automobile manufacturers. Emerging in the process were pictures like the flying Fiat (1973), the VW Golf dismantled into its individual component parts (1987), and even the brightly illuminated Mercedes (1989), which we selected for this magazine issue. While viewing your image archive, we talked a lot about your collaboration with the automobile companies. As an aside, you mentioned a photo studio that you designed for Volkswagen. It was created in 1974 as part of the campaign accompanying the market launch of the first VW Golf. How did this project come about?
Hans Hansen    Volkswagen already had a photo studio on the company premises in Wolfsburg, but due to considerations like size, technical equipment, and the model casting necessary for the campaign, the pictures were to be taken in a film studio near Hamburg.
I was included in the planning process early on, and the cost estimate for the two-week production stage was extremely high. The expenditures involved rent for the giant studio, set construction costs, and also pay for the necessary personnel. The set would have been dismantled after production finished but would have had to be completely rebuilt six months later to accommodate different motifs. And that would have meant spending the same amount yet again.So I suggested that we simply build a new studio on the company grounds in Wolfsburg, one that would surpass the qualities of the studio in Hamburg and always be available to the company. At first it was a difficult decision for VW to make, because of the high investment required to begin with. But since carrying out the production in Hamburg would have been such an unwise decision, VW ultimately consented.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 131/2015, pp. 68–71.

CINENOVA FEMINIST FILM AND VIDEO DISTRIBUTOR

KAROLIN MEUNIER, MARINA VISHMIDT: “Your ears will tremble”— Futuristic Microcosms

The present day of a feminist organisation founded in the late 1970s can be taken as a starting point for a collective attempt to not just preserve its legacy, but to think about the long-term perspective of feminist film distribution. It could also open up a wider discussion on the future of feminism. In the case of Cinenova, insisting on its relevance today also means reconsidering its past; that is, the circumstances of its formation as well as the selection of films and videos that are available to us today. It is an ongoing debate on what it means to actualise these images without historicising them—to apply, translate, and reactivate without appropriation.
“Wake up! We’re gonna get murdered in the streets. And if you just lean back and let it happen, Sister, you better gonna get it together and wake up.”¹ This call for action and for joining the urban guerrilla “Women’s Army” is broadcast by an independent radio station in Lizzie Borden’s feature “Born in Flames” (US 1983).

¹ Quote from “Born in Flames” by Lizzie Borden (US 1983).

Text feature in Camera Austria International 131/2015, pp. 71–72.