Imagine you are a photographer needing to go out into the world to take new pictures. But what does ‘out’ actually mean these days? And how can we tell what ‘new’ pictures are?
These are the questions Viktoria Binschtok and Michael Schafer bestows to the art enthusiasts. The ongoing photo exhibition series ‘With/Against the Flow: Contemporary Photographic Interventions’ at Lalita Kala Akademi, Chennai presents two artists from Germany,Viktoria Binschtok and Michael Schafer.
The exhibition is curated by Florian Ebner and Christin Muller. Viktoria Binschtok is a conceptual photographer who befogs the distinction between found photography,documentation,restaging and original compositions whereas Michael Schafer focuses in crafting and compelling elegant images that acquire the authenticity of moments that links the image to the day.
Having established their own distinct visual ideas they are now questioning the realm of photography anew. The photographs portray the artists’ reflection on ‘images from media’ exploring the different ways they operate. Both undertake an artistic exploration with a particular focus on today’s communication media.
The photos exhibited maneuvers the autonomy of images in the brave new world that will soon be subjugated by digital platforms. Their works follows a tradition of artistic interest in 1970s and also can be viewed as a representation of works by new generation of artists today.
Viktoria Binschtok’s photographs from the sreies ‘Three People on the Phone’ were taken in Tokyo back in 2004, the starting era of smartphones. The images convey a sense of the degree to which these small devices would completely revolutionize our attention economics. In her series ‘World of Details’ Viktoria Binschtok combines views of New York from Google Street View with close ups she has taken onsite.
She uses this as a means to confront the automated images of the Google Universe with her own subjective interpretation of the same reality. Following this, her ‘Clusters’ explores the relationship between images that are based only on the results produced by the algorithms of a Google image search for ‘similar images’.
In Michael Schafer’s ‘Generation’ series he takes catwalk shots of the models from the internet and replaces their heads with studio shots of children’s faces. This gives rise to hybrid creatures that make the desires, longings and physical ideals of our media. In his earlier work ‘Press Images’ Michael Schafer uses actors and props to restage new images right down to the last detail, before transfering them to large format wall panels. In this way, the artist explores how the narrative of a press image functions.
The ‘Open Archive’ combines hitherto unused images from Michael Schafer’s newspaper and internet image archive. Here, Michael Schafer uses striking images that were prevalent in the media and are therefore fresh in the minds of viewers. Goethe Institute and Max Mueller Bhavan, Chennai in collaboration with Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) Foundation presents the photo exhibition happening between 14 November and 1 December.
(The article is written by News Today interns, Heera Ramesh and Ardra S)