"Moonstruck"

gelatin silver print

signed, titled, dated and numbered (pencil) on verso

Hanns Otte is a traveller.
Moonstruck is, like earlier works for instance the series America-Trilogy which was created partly in the US and in Canada – the result of a journey, a longer stay in Rome. Hanns Otte travels not only to foreign cities, he is also a traveller in his own immediate surroundings. Thereby his attention is focussed on the spaces in between and those turned away, which, as the seemingly immediate proximity, are to be discovered anew.

Travellers are strangers.
In this manner he roams through Salzburg's suburbs, as well as through the backyards and parking lots of American cities. The experience of spending an involuntary night out-of-doors near Chicago motivated him to deliberately wanderthrough Salzburg's Surroundings at night. Only in the darkroom, as a series of flash pictures, did he come to know these surroundings. An unknown World becomes accessible.
Unfamiliar to him are the destinations of his travels, unfamiliar what the eye is accustomed to see, but which is ustomarily overlooked. This Otte teaches the eye to really perceive. And the secondary spaces, wherever he photographs them, seem to be identical. The observer, with his camera, establishes unity. The content of the image is factualized and displayable. With the help of the camera the photographer perceives, perceives himself and wants to be perceived in his work. His otherwise depopulated photographs refer to the vis-a-vis – to himself. This presence remains the only consolation in many of the motifs. The photographer on a journey to himself.

In 1986 he records with fervor: "I really wish that everyone who sees my pictures actualh, sees me." Here is someone with a camera telling a story – his own. In March 1990 he adds: "Am la writing photographer or a photographing writer?" Since the beginning of 1989 he has, in addition, expanded his written introspections to a comprehensive literary endeavor.

Textualalusions are plentifulin the pictures of the Moonstruck cycle. In the photos they appear as ad-posters on advertisement pillars and on city buses, as views into bookshop windows incidentally captured wallgraffiti, a politicalslogan oreternalizing scribbles at historical places. The use of text is also staged, for example a book (Prologue) on a table or the photo ofa magazin on a stone parapet. There are also eloquent pictures without Words. The racing motorcyclists on the lowered shop shutter, and another one, showing a piece of cloth resembling a cap lying adjacent to a wide road marking on a dirty street. Hanns Otte took the title for his portfolio from the film poster pictured in the Epilogue. With this choice defining content through Words-all emerging pieces of text are provided with meaningful characteristics within their pictoral allusions. Here, not only the viewpoint of the obsenver, but also the interpretation have their focal point. Since the arrangement of a work in a series is of great significance, one must still ask if, in accordance with the dramatic arrangement, a context emerges which the image goes beyond sequence. ln the individual image, especially in the one with the book, the presence of text is powerful, over- whelmingly powerful.

Here we have a work consisting of nineteen pieces – a series of images alluding to real and rendered legibility. A successful presentation of the relationship between text and the pictoral. For the photographer/author a razor-edged journey. A journey between writing and photography.

The sleepwalker is also a traveller for he is a stranger unto himselft.
(Christian Gögger, aus: Hanns Otte, Moonstruck, 1991)