91 | 2005

In summer this year, as part of the “Chikaku Time and Memory in Japan” exhibition cureted by Toshiharu Ito (a project in co-operation with Kunsthaus Graz and Japan Foundation), Camera Austria presented works of Takuma Nakahira, publisher of Provoke magazine, one of the pioneers of contemporary Japanese photography together with Daido Moriyama, theorist and artist. Since his “rediscovery” at his retrospective show at the Yokohama Museum and the monograph published by Osiris in 2003, his current works have once again come to the fore in the debate about the possibilities of describing reality with the aid of photography. His now legendary early work reflects the political and social change of Japan in the 1960s and conveys an aesthetic impression of his doubts about bringing about social change by means of artistic and publicistic work. In his essay, the Japanese art theorist Masashi Kohara discusses Nakahira’s political, theoretical, artistic, but also biographical milestones.

The focus of Marco Poloni’s work is on our trust in the supposed ability of the image as a valid representative of reality, but also the modes of perception pre-informed by culture and the media. He explores the many facets of this subject in his works – serial photographic works that he refers to as scripts or storyboards for films. In her essay, Iris Dressler focuses on the artist’s recent works, for example “Permutit – Storyboard for a Film”, which featured at the Swiss pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennial. Although Poloni’s cinematic photo series appear to be staged, he does not work with any actors or props. He presents nothing but real situations and yet creates profoundly fictional narrative and pictorial spaces that oscillate between deception, imagination and reality.

The works of the Shanghai-based artist Yang Fudong, in contrast, are lavishly enacted and are similar to classical Chinese cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, both aesthetically and in terms of content. His attention is often focused on the actors? gestures, movements and looks. In his work, Yang Fudong attempts to track down the changes and non-simultaneities in modern Chinese society that are due, above all, to the country’s rapid economic developments and the contingent social change. This was a good opportunity for our author Hias Wrba to examine the artist’s pictorial compositions more closely in his contribution.

Enactment is a term that may also be associated with the documentary, direct photographic works of the Austrian artist Andrea Witzmann. Her works provide insights into spaces that sometimes appear to be ordered as if by an invisible hand. There are no or few people in these pictures, even in the landscapes. Objects that betray the presence of a person are equally rare, with the interior situations remaining objective on the surface and seemingly devoid of history. In her contribution, Maren Lübbke-Tidow sets out to track down Witzmann’s strategy, that allows the viewer an emotional access by intentionally placing details, but also by introducing poetical, associative captions, tempting him to dive into the intimate seclusion of these picture stories.

In the fourth and final instalment of his series of essays “Mass media acts: On Visual Programming of the Political Space”, Tom Holert discusses the events connected with “Live8” and the terror attacks in London, exploring the question as to how pictures of moving crowds and individuals are used to mobilise a globalised public. We would like to thank Tom Holert for this enriching co-operation.

In conclusion, we would like to invite you this autumn once again to visit Camera Austria at the fair stands at the Frieze Art Fair in London, the Art Forum in Berlin, and at Art Cologne.

Christine Frisinghelli