85 | 2004

REINHARD BRAUN

An Exposure of Photography: Barbara Probst's "exposures"

Barbara Probst’s series »exposure« showcases a fleeting moment for multiple cameras: exposure – uncovering, revealing – as synonyms of photographic practice are enacted and at the same time put into perspective. The artist thus refers to the photographic paradigm of the facticity of the moment, but breaks down this moment into different perspectives that are, per se, both true and insufficient. Facticity is enacted in the multi-part, large-format tableaux as a construct of photography itself. The “exposures” show that omissions and contradictions, that replacements and appropriations in particular, are part of photographic practice itself, and that they indicate how a picture not only shows something but also causes something else, an other picture to disappear other pictures that, in Barbara Probst’s work, not only supply a “more exact” description, but in some cases suggest totally different interpretations of the situation which is, incidentally, always enacted for the cameras. In this sometimes contradictory confrontation of “exposures” of one and the same situation, the pictures do not comment on each other, among other things they refer to completely contrary contexts, thus enabling a commentary on the connotation of the photographic by not merely misrepresenting, but in fact effacing the denotation: should we see the night-time scene in the forest (“exposure #8”) as a young girl’s adventurous, playful excursion or as a crime scene… Is the quickly sketched situation of three people on the roof of a house (“exposure #17”) the result of an aesthetic idea or are we witness to the impending escalation of an eternal triangle, the meaning of which we cannot discern from the two pictures displayed by the artist? Why is one of the two women making a defensive gesture? Is there some reason that she specifically is looking straight at the camera from the same angle of view as the man in the foreground (and not the other woman in the foreground)?
Barbara Probst embroils us in different possible interpretations; particularly by apparently focusing on a specific moment in time in the various series, she directs our attention to the time before or after, diverting it away from the meaning of this empictured moment and to the construction of a duration that actually creates the meaning of the action or scene, i.e. that does not give us anything to see but something to think about.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 85/2004, pp. 7–18.

HERTA WOLF

Thomas Ruff: The Historian of the Photographic

Thomas Ruff’s most recent cycle of works features photographs of machines whose purpose was to produce tools along with photographs of tools produced with the aid of this machinery. In addition to pictures of lathes, machines with drills clamped in them, photos, then, of machines used to grind drilling heads, they also depict the workpieces of these machines and drills and milling machines arranged in the style of illustrations. In terms of pictorial composition, the machines are presented at a slight angle, with the photos of the tool machines obeying the conventions of technical drawings. The presented photos of the workpieces, in contrast, are reminiscent of the arrangement of technical equipment predefined in and by the plates of the encyclopaedia of Diderot and d’Alembert, with the variously sized drills and milling machines photographed from different perspectives presented in strict formation.
If we look into Ruff’s new image worlds, this proves both simple and complicated. Simple, because Ruff seems to do nothing but recycle a found archive of images. Complicated, because the pictures that he creates by means of this recycling cannot be understood if we see them solely as large-format copies of photographic glass negatives. Nor must we forget that Thomas Ruff has subjected the original pictures to a – digital and pictorial – transformation: scanned and presented in a new coloration reminiscent of the hammergrey enamel of industrial machinery, the small 13 cm x 18 cm negative plates become large-format pictures.

Once again, the new cycle of works by Thomas Ruff represents the relationship between analogue and digital image generation processes. The “Maschinen” demonstrate how profoundly digital processes are entrenched in analogue processes, and how deeply digital photography are indebted to analogue photography when the latter finds its way into the new image worlds of the digital through and as photography. In this sense, we may refer to the photographer Thomas Ruff as a historian of the photographic.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 85/2004, pp. 19–30.

MANISHA JOTHADY

N.I.C.J.O.B.: Sampling, Mixing, Cutting, Looping: Images after the Images

N.I.C.J.O.B. recycles sequences of feature films, annulling passages of time in the source material. As the bioengineer dissects DNA into tiny segments, so too does he dissect time into small, manageable parts, rearranging sequences, stopping them from continuing by means of repetition, or doping the moving pictures to a standstill with the aid of loops. Original narrative associations literally lose their plot. In N.I.C.J.O.B.’s works, the heroes of grand narrative films morph into prisoners in an enigmatic endless loop. The artist’s emotionally charged music samples or post-edited soundtracks of the film material consumed through TV evoke a synergy effect of image and sound.
N.I.C.J.O.B. creates video loops with varying repetition intervals, thereby undermining our conventional understanding of the phenomenon of time. By accelerating the frequency of repetition beyond that of conventional animations, the artist breaks up familiar patterns of perception.

The search for causal links as a means of understanding the world constitutes a fundamental part of our life. When the protagonists in N.I.C.J.O.B.’s works are trapped in the loop of images or the film shot freezes into a still, and we still cannot wrest ourselves away from the pictures, then – although the artist does not spoon-feed us any narrative pattern – it becomes clear, metaphorically, how meekly we are able to surrender to the mechanism of the unchanging. N.I.C.J.O.B. leaves us to basic existential moods in order to accomplish a kind of “atmospheric coherence” as a final refuge of the search for meaning. And this arises in the blank spaces that he asks us to fill in. In this way, the artist intentionally strives for the self-reflective position of the viewer, and indeed, we find ourselves constantly trying to construct meaning. When N.I.C.J.O.B. himself likens his works to haikus, he makes it clear that their metaphorical potential may be as quickly and succinctly apprehended as a three-line poem but that he is subsequently concerned above all with deciphering a deeper meaning. Hence, the titles of the works and finally the pseudonym itself correspond to a puzzle, which is ultimately also responsible for the fascination of his works. For the strategy of the puzzle contains the potential to be more disconcerting and sublime than art that merely invites us to contemplate or that is concerned only with presenting itself.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 85/2004, pp. 31–42.

ROBERTA VALTORTA

Archivio dello Spazio. Interview by Thilo Koenig

Between 1987 and 1997, Roberta Valtorta coordinated seven photography campaigns for the cultural administration authorities of Milan Province as part of a documentation of architectures and landscapes as cultural assets headed by the urbanist Achille Sacconi. Based among other things on the French project “DATAR” (1984 – 88) and with comparably meagre funding, Archivio dello Spazio (Space Archive) commissioned a total of fifty-eight photographers to photograph the situation of cultural assets in the Milan area and to deliver at least thirty-six pictures; most participants handed in far more. 7558 prints were made within a period of ten years. Seven large and around one hundred smaller exhibitions, four international conventions, and more than fifty conferences accompanied the long-term project. As of 1995, the idea evolved to establish a permanent centre that would perform regular activities, have a specialised library, and commission works. In future, the Archivio dello Spazio will contribute substantially to the basic stock of the newly opening Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea in Villa Ghirlanda, Cinisello Balsamo near Milan.

Text feature in Camera Austria International 85/2004, pp. 43–48.