"Körperlandschaft"

gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard

signed, titled, numbered and dated (pencil) and artist stamp on mount verso

From time to time, Fritz Simak also took an interest in his own body. In his early 20s, he was well-built and muscular, and there are several photographs of him from this period. He developed a particular interest in his collarbone area. In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, he found an interesting phenomenon in the painting The Crowning with Thorns, 1601, by Michelangelo Merisi (known as Caravaggio, 1571–1610): "When a body is illuminated in a dark room by a small but strong light source alone, not only do bright, semi-shaded, and shaded areas appear; rather, the body itself becomes a light source and illuminates the areas lying in full shadow. The neck in full light reflects onto the collarbone area and illuminates it a little."¹
The inspiration for this photograph was Oskar Schlemmer's Abstract Figure from 1921, which Simak had seen in the former Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts in the Schweizergarten in Vienna. His friend Andreas Nagler stood as a model, and a 1,000-watt lamp served as the light source in an otherwise dark room.
Compare this with Ralph Gibson's photograph, which shows the same section of the shoulder with collarbone. In Gibson's work, however, this part of the body becomes an abstract, two-dimensional structure due to the soft light and the use of the photoengraving technique. In contrast to Simak, where the hard light emphasizes the plasticity of the body's forms.
(Christoph Fuchs)

Notes

1
Fritz Simak, Photographs in the Key of Life, Salzburg 2025, p. 288