Josef Schultz : Photography

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‘Form #16’
120 x 156 cm
C-Print
2004
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‘Halle rot-grau #2’
100 x 133 cm
C-Print
2002
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‘Halle rot-grau #1’
100 x 133 cm
C-Print
2001
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‘Form #14’
120 x 160 cm
C-Print
2004
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‘Rot-blau’
100 x 142 cm
C-Print
2004
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‘Blau-rot’
100 x 133 cm
C-Print
2001
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Josef Schulz is a “photographer” of modern warehouses and factories – trite industrial buildings that nobody would want to consider to be of any major architectural interest. All over the world these buildings are mass-produced, built for all kinds of industrial production processes using identical plans and blueprints. Their exteriors offer no hint whatsoever of the specific purposes for which they are used, their facades vary only in terms of the materials selected – all of them pre-fabricated, such as slabs of concrete, corrugated sheet metal and other cheap building materials. Josef Schulz does not aim at exposing this architecture in any way nor does he want to venture into a critical analysis of its appearance. He simply uses the photographs of the buildings to study the grammar of his trade. Schulz starts by taking traditional photographs of the halls, storage facilities and industrial structures with large sized photographic plates. Using digital image processing, the analogue picture produced is then “cleansed” of the few remaining hints that point to the age, location or environment of the buildings…

All details that might possibly allow conclusions concerning the actual size, users, time or place of the buildings are completely removed. The physical reality of the buildings is changed in such a way that they seem to become virtual blueprints designed to perfection. Schulz focuses on colours and shapes reducing them to simple block-like structures. Particular emphasis is given to symmetries, colour contrasts and the overall structure of the image: they thus become dominant components of the picture. The buildings now resemble toy architecture; and suddenly appear to be benign counterparts of themselves. He uses this type of processing to eliminate the gap between “photographic” and “painted” reality for the benefit of optimizing the picture. He reverses the photographic process by reducing the physical buildings to their design concepts and the photographically “real” picture to its original “virtual” one. Schulz thus opts for an approach that is diametrically opposed to that of producers of digital images – to make the rendering of artificial pictures appear as real as possible. The viewer is somewhat confused: he seems to recognize parts that appear to be authentic without being able to distinguish whether they were truly located before the camera or generated with the tools of digital image processing. By doing so, he distances himself from the “objectivity” of photography and shows that pictures are always the construct of the visual power of imagination of the artist. – [Extract]

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Josef Schultz : Website

Josef Schultz : More Works

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Alni Stalke : ‘[Ex]Pride’ Series (Photography)

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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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‘[Ex]Pride’ Series
archival ink prints
50cm x 50cm
2004-08
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Industry in Soviet times was one of supreme pride and supporting points of Soviet ideology. After the nineties, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the great part of factories underwent difficult economical crisis because of various reasons. Raw materials of goods and prime cost of energy rapidly increased though society’s purchasing ability remained the same as well as manufactured production in its quality dropped behind imported goods from western countries. Even now, years after, the larger half of corps of old factories are sold and used as warehouses, or they just remain empty and vandalized.

The theme ‘Pride’ in my essay of photographs is interpreted as [Ex] Pride, having a look in interiors of factories and carrying a subjective visual research about former pride. As the essence in my photographs I have used inner environment of factories what even now doesn’t seem to be lifeless and goes on with its inner quiet life. …Noise of dropping water, wind in broken windows, old posters and documents, books from soviet times, personal belongings of workers…

I didn’t look for anything specific. I put my focus more on symbolic and broadly interpreted things and compositions what would be possible to understand with wide comprehension and in multi-levels. From my childhood I remember times when sirens in mornings and evenings announced beginning and end of a working day, and I remember times when suddenly closed territories of factories became approachable to anybody.

A great part of my youth passed in these forsaken corps and it was one of the main subjective motives why I choose this exact visual interpretation for the concept ‘pride’. Nowadays people who come here are very different. These are children and teenagers who come here to play, or have fun vandalizing. There are also people who try to find something useful for household or selling. – [Extract : [Ex]Pride]

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Alni Stalke : Website

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Lynne Cohen : ‘Interior Spaces’ (Photography)

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Cohen is known for her photographs of domestic and institutional interior spaces, which have included living rooms, public halls, retirement homes, laboratories, offices, showrooms, shooting ranges, factories, spas, and military installations. Despite this interest in living and working spaces, Cohen’s photographs are usually devoid of human presence. She photographs using an 8 x 10″ view camera.

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‘SPA’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
1993
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‘Untitled’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
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‘SPA’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
1993
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‘Classroom, Police School’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
1985
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‘Classroom, Flying School’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
1980
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‘Military installation’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
1994
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‘SPA’
Lynne Cohen
Photograph
1994
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Since the early 1970s, Cohen has lived and worked in no fewer than nine countries, photographing unpopulated interiors in public and private establishments such as schools, spas, and laboratories. Her practice has been informed by her nomadic lifestyle. Her mostly black-and-white images may seem to be documentations of specific awkward and cold, yet alluring, spaces. But are they? Cohen’s already complex imagery of the social fabric of contemporary cities is further complicated by her decision not to provide her viewers with information about where they were shot. Viewers are therefore faced with a panoply of found interiors that are as many testimonials to cultural and social environments situated throughout the Western world; none of them, however, can be attached to a specific culture.

The environments depicted warrant a questioning of the spaces that we inhabit. This interrogation shifts the discourse from one of tension between Self and Other to one of internal instability, which encourages a non-oppositional conception of cultural entities. The entirety of Cohen’s oeuvre consists of interior spaces, both private and public. They are shot with an 8 x 10 inch camera, which enables her to produce incredibly detailed and sharp images. The large format of her works and the unobstructed foreground seem to allow the viewers to step into the picture if they so desired. This is real space.

[Extract : (Un)framing Interior Views]

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Lynne Cohen : Website

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Sander Steins : ‘Producers For Consumers’ (Mixed Media)

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The industrial revolution brought us prosperity but these days factories are acting more and more like dealers. Our modern society is completely built around them. Factories producing high-tech wares to feed the empty souls for a new controlled and addicted generation. This series shows the portraits of the producers for consumers.

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‘producers for consumers’ 2
mixed media print
40 x 50 cm
2011

‘producers for consumers’ 5
mixed media print
40 x 50 cm
2011

‘producers for consumers’ 4
mixed media print
40 x 50 cm
2011

‘producers for consumers’ 1
mixed media print
40 x 50 cm
2011

‘producers for consumers’ 8
mixed media print
40 x 50 cm
2011

‘producers for consumers’ 3
mixed media print
40 x 50 cm
2011

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It was the summer of 1980 when I was seven years old that I sat in the back seat of my father’s blue Opel Kadett coupé and saw the first smoking chimneys of the German Ruhrgebiet. Those were the declining years of one of Europe’s biggest and heaviest industrial areas and I will never forget the impression it left imprinted on my retina. As a child I rebuilt entire cities including large factories with my building blocks and then lay on the floor to see the chimneys emerge on the horizon. Later I started drawing complete maps with of course lots of space for industrial areas.

That fascination with industry and factories has ever since remained, even though these days – with today’s knowledge – I see things very differently. Most factories in the Ruhrgebiet have been pulled down and a lot of former industrial terrains have been cleaned up and/or have had a change of use. It shows that we, as human beings, continuously build, demolish and rebuild, but still the world is none the better for it. New threats such as overpopulation and the blurring of traditional standards and values through the emergence of the internet are seriously endangering our habitats and have a fundamental influence on life here on earth. This theme plays a crucial role in most of my art. Where for me it started with admiration for all those huge factories and smoking chimneys there now is the realization that mankind should use its knowledge much more to ensure an enjoyable future on this planet for the next generations.

The rapid technological developments make it possible for me to apply new digital techniques in my work. Besides these new techniques I still use traditional techniques and materials like pencils, paint, oil pastels and ink. My way of working also includes building, destroying and rebuilding. I scan paintings and drawings into the computer, cut them into pieces and rebuild and subsequently print them. After that process I can decide to start drawing and painting on the print again. I also can decide to work only the traditional way without using a computer. For me, the choice of medium and ways to edit my materials will always remain a source of experiment that will help me transform my themes into my personal visual language. [artists statement]

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Sander Steins : Website

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Josef Schultz : Photography (sachliches, 2001-2008)

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‘Grau-orange’
100 x 133 cm
C-Print
2008
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‘Halle rot #2’
100 x 133 cm
C-Print
2001
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‘Halle rot-grau’
100 x 120 cm
C-Print
2001
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Dach rot’
100 x 133 cm
C-Print
2001
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Josef Schulz is a “photographer” of modern warehouses and factories – trite industrial buildings that nobody would want to consider to be of any major architectural interest. All over the world these buildings are mass-produced, built for all kinds of industrial production processes using identical plans and blueprints. Their exteriors offer no hint whatsoever of the specific purposes for which they are used, their facades vary only in terms of the materials selected – all of them pre-fabricated, such as slabs of concrete, corrugated sheet metal and other cheap building materials. Josef Schulz does not aim at exposing this architecture in any way nor does he want to venture into a critical analysis of its appearance. He simply uses the photographs of the buildings to study the grammar of his trade. Schulz starts by taking traditional photographs of the halls, storage facilities and industrial structures with large sized photographic plates. Using digital image processing, the analogue picture produced is then “cleansed” of the few remaining hints that point to the age, location or environment of the buildings…

All details that might possibly allow conclusions concerning the actual size, users, time or place of the buildings are completely removed. The physical reality of the buildings is changed in such a way that they seem to become virtual blueprints designed to perfection. Schulz focuses on colours and shapes reducing them to simple block-like structures. Particular emphasis is given to symmetries, colour contrasts and the overall structure of the image: they thus become dominant components of the picture. The buildings now resemble toy architecture; and suddenly appear to be benign counterparts of themselves. He uses this type of processing to eliminate the gap between “photographic” and “painted” reality for the benefit of optimizing the picture. He reverses the photographic process by reducing the physical buildings to their design concepts and the photographically “real” picture to its original “virtual” one. Schulz thus opts for an approach that is diametrically opposed to that of producers of digital images – to make the rendering of artificial pictures appear as real as possible. The viewer is somewhat confused: he seems to recognize parts that appear to be authentic without being able to distinguish whether they were truly located before the camera or generated with the tools of digital image processing. By doing so, he distances himself from the “objectivity” of photography and shows that pictures are always the construct of the visual power of imagination of the artist. – [Extract]

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Josef Schultz : Website

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