"Räume - Fotografische Dekonstruktionen"

photogram on gelatin silver paper

For this project I decided to use rooms containing all the private objects of everyday life as a huge camera obscura into which one could actually enter. The room is made dark and outside light penetrates a tiny hole in the window and on to the photographic material that is going to be exposed situated opposite. Furniture stops the entering light from leaving white shadows in the photographic image from outside the room. Like abstract sculptures these white shadows break into the photographic image and create a new artificial spatiality. The pinhole-technique reverses the picture coming from outside the room, whereas the white shadows are exposed directly and not reversed. This method combines two different techniques of exposure at the same time: simultaneously the photogram and the photographic image of the camera obscura follow their physical rules. Using the basic means of photography an unknown reality is created. Visual irritations reveal contrasting information. (Edgar Lissel)