35 | 1990

Attentive readers of CAMERA AUSTRIA will remember our advance notice announcing Peter Weibel’s contribution about Sigmund Freund’s media theory that was due for publication early this year. Meanwhile the preparations for this overall theme have been completed. Visually,hey have drawn on image material from Freud’s surroundings; theoretically, they rest upon three texts: “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, “Civilization and its Discontents” and ” The Mystic Writing-Pad”‘. Up to the printer’s deadline we were hoping to receive Peter Weibel’s article, ut since we do not wish to delay the current issue until 1991, we have (again)  decider to shelve his contribution until the next issue. Thus, one aspect of this issue’s  theme , which would have offered another approach to the works published, is mussing, but we hope that the article on Freud will serve as a contextual umbrella even in retrospective.

Among the most interesting tasks with publications like CAMERA AUSTRIA is he putting in context of theoretical and photographic works of varying positions so as to shed new light on each work in its own hermetic sphere. Even though the context- ginning  contribution will now be a post-script, we hope that this issue will still be readable. Connections can be made between S.I.Witkiewicz’ portraits, especially his selfportrait  of 1912/13 (commented on by Urszula Czartoryska of the Sztuki Museum, Lodz, who discusses, as a background, the biography and th literary work of this important Polish artist) and the position of Cindy Sherman, in this case a contemporary position in the play of “myself as someone else”. Anelies Štraba offers the viewer the subjective sphere (of the artist’s) experience: a sense of accuracy will be felt not so much in the actual description but in the maintaining of the threshold between inside and outside, between the familiar and the alien. This “grey area” should remain untouched (undiscussed), and thus Bruno Schnyder’s text is not a commentary but rather a verbal reflection of that type of experience.

In her essay on Joel-Peter Witkin, Marlene Schnelle-Schneyder aims at the very opposite: It is precisely these works that develop their true terror only in an often uncontradicted holistic and myhifying interpretation, that should be lfted, by the way of dissecting the image into its elements , to a level that will allow analysis.

With the publication of photo montages by the poet, musician and draughtsman Gerad Rühm from the period of 1958 to 1962 we intend to open a series introducing photographic art in Austria from the past four decades, and we ware happy, that it is Gerhard Rühm who  makes the beginning. His own texts about these photo works are complemented by an essay from the pen of the Viennese writer Ferdinand Schmatz. (Thus, without any intention on our part, the present issue, being opened by the writer S.I.Witkiewicz, comes full circle).

We intend to relier the next issue of CAMERA AUSTRIA in March 1991, hoping you will still be interested in a second reading of the current one .

Christine Frisinghelli