23 | 1987

Occasioned by CAMERA AUSTRIA’s most recent issue(No. 23), we have received some critical comment to which we gladly respond:

CAMERA AUSTRIA is published in irregular intervals which reflects on the data announced in the calendar of expositions and events. We ask our readers to remember that CAMERA AUSTRIA is being produced by a team of three; the production work includes the topical selection, reviewing and proof-reading of contributions, correspondence, mailing of printed material, accounting, layout, supervision of the printing process and advertising: in short, everything except the translation work, the type-settings and the actual printing. What goes into the calendar depends on press-releases by respective organizers – invitations, in most cases, mailed a few days before each event. It is easy to see that such information cannot be up-to-date by he time it is published. It would be useful if the organizers of regular programs could make their plans known ahead of time (at least semi-annually in case of major events). After 12  years’ experience with public events we are well aware of the difficulties – and we do not exclude ourselves from this criticism. Galleries must frequently make do with limited financial means and without staff which makes regular public communication difficult. The fact that our calendar of expositions and event is, to the organizers, an a-posteriori-justification of sorts may make up for some disadvantages, even if we are not happy with the situation. Still – we do hope for (ongoing) cooperation in the future!

CAMERA AUSTRIA is a bilingual publication. This simply implies an additional work load. For financial reasons, however, we find it impossible to also publish the information and review section bilingually. For our foreign readers (there are meanwhile, quite a few, although the majority sill belongs to the German language area), this means being left without access to many detail of information. But we are doing our best and have extender the English section in this issue. We ask our foreign readers to understand that there are limitations, through, particularly since CAMERA AUSTRIA has, in comparison with other magazines, more written text which lends the magazine book character.

This issue of CAMERA AUSTRIA highlights photographic work from West Germany and Austria. The occasion for our selection of contribution was the exhibition  “Reste des Authentischen” (Remants of the authentic) at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, West Germany, on one hand , and the exhibition “Ich-Bilder/Welt-Bilder” (Self-Images/World-Images) at the Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria. Both exhibitions independently attempted to find argements for new and modern ways of dewing with the medium of photography. While the Essen exhibition also included wires by representatives of the graphic arts, the selection of exhibits in Graz was limited to a purely photographic context, the reason being that in Austria “art using photography” is still subject to the analytically enlightening questioning of the medium that had played an important role during the seventies.

Both exhibitions have introduced the new photographers’ self-image by insisting on an exact description of the standpoint the photographer takes in each work. Emphasis was given the general context regarded as essential to the work by the photographer himself. Parallels also appeared in connection with the methods of handling the medium.: the procedure chosen, the premeditated conception of a piece of work alone is not valid criterion any more: the quality of a certain work results from the very individual expression of ideas and from the skeptically refracted way of dealing with really. This is not to be taken as a formal analysis (bound to merely scratch the surface), but as a critical involvement in the “world” and as a conscious admission of subjective experience. The fact that reviewers have not taken notice of these works (although in Graz, they have) or that they have made their personal understanding (ever subjective, after all) the general, moralizing, petty standard does not discount the quality of the photographic works but may well be an indication of an ongoing debate about photography beyond the artists’ gossip – a debate wherein the decisions of photographers and exhibition organizers will perhaps be taken seriously. Of course it is easier to pull drawers and leave undisturbed the orderliness found therein that to risk just one step outside one’s own snail-shell. Long live the grand gesture, even if accomplished by means of an apparatus.

Christine Frisinghelli, Manfred Willmann