September 24, 2014

Another abstract one from Till Augustin

Till Augustin is working with glass in ways I've never seen before and this work has an intrinsic appeal to me. Perhaps it's the duality of the raw glass that he works with and the refined glass that finds its way into optical lenses on my camera...
Be that as it may: this work of him caught my eye and after doing a pretty boring shot angled from slightly above I caught this one that really shows off the beauty of this object:

Till_Augustin_70650

Now: this is really abstract!

September 21, 2014

"Auf AEG" again: 2014!

Really, really interesting for all lovers of contemporary art and photography: this weekend was the start but many exhibits and ateliers of the artists can be visited next weekane (27.+28 Sep) too and some are open until Oct. 5th. For more information see here or there.
Fpr photographers there is f/stop (hall 15, don't miss the upper floor!) and the Akademie Galerie by Jürgen Teller & students (hall 13).

Highly recommended!

See an exhibit from one of my favorite artists, Till Augustin. He's mainly working with glass, rust and steel cables.

Till Augustin 70651


September 18, 2014

Is it minimal?

That was really hard work: reading Michael Fried's "Why photography matters as art as never before". But the most interesting part to me were the photos that he selected to make his point about "theatricality". The Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto features quite prominently in Fried's book with two appearances:
  1. Sugimoto's interior shots of film theaters only illuminated by the film projected on the screen - with the added twist that the exposure ran through the entire length of the film.
  2. Sugimoto's "Seascapes" showing black & white shots of the sea with the horizon dividing the image in halve.
The latter images immediately appealed to me in that they are really pretty abstract in their total reduction of color and form. Those images inspired me to see what I can get with a similar setup. I chose some place at the North Sea and used the same lens, same focal length, same position but shot at different times. With the ever changing weather and light being the only variables - and the wind creating more or less waves.

Here's one of the most minimalistic shots I've (ever) captured with the morning mist obscuring the horizon, so even the line that normally defines the horizon is missing from this shot: It's only different shades of gray and some random wave patterns.

After Sugimoto 1 70039

If you 'd like to see all shots from this series, head over here. And don't fret: all of them are less minimalistic than the image above ;-)