"Blütenzweig"

Gelatin silver contact print (bromide lithprint) on Agfa Record Rapid 111 (1980s), selenium toned

signed, dated, edited and stamped on museum cardboard verso

The cherry blossom, especially revered in Japan as sakura, is a central symbol of the transience of life (mono no aware), a motif that is deeply reflected in Japanese culture and art and often symbolizes the fleeting nature of human existence. In Japanese painting, the cherry blossom is found particularly in ukiyo-e prints from the Edo period (1603-1868) by artists such as Utagawa Hiroshige or Katsushika Hokusai, where it not only adorns landscapes but also conveys emotional moods. As a symbol of an idealized, beautiful but short life, the blossom also appears in the motifs of vanitas in European Baroque painting, for example in the form of wilting flowers and skulls, which also allude to the transience of life.
In modern times, the cherry blossom is a central motif of Japanese identity and is also understood internationally as a symbol of beauty, closeness to nature and peace. It can be found in contemporary art, design and pop culture - comparable to the rose in Western art, which can symbolize love, pain or death depending on the context.
A particularly revealing art-historical comparison to the symbolism of the cherry blossom can be found in European Art Nouveau in Gustav Klimt's work Der Lebensbaum (The Tree of Life, 1905–1909). Klimt also takes up themes such as change, growth and decay. Both pictorial motifs - the blossoming cherry blossom and the branching tree of life - place the cycles of nature at the center of their aesthetics.¹ In terms of content, Klimt's tree of life combines a philosophical dimension of depth with aesthetic appeal, similar to how the cherry blossom is linked in Japanese thought with the concept of mono no aware, the "delicate sadness about transience".² Thus, both pictorial worlds reflect the idea that beauty is inextricably linked to transience.
Waldbauer also references transience with his use of analog photography techniques and processing methods that are slowly falling into oblivion. He used natural light as illumination and an 8x10-inch large-format camera for the photograph. The print was made as a contact print, whereby the negative is placed directly onto the photographic paper and exposed. The size of the print therefore corresponds to the size of the negative and thus to the original image in the camera. This very direct method of producing photo prints has a long tradition and dates back to the first photographs.
Waldbauer uses old black and white paper as photographic paper, such as this "Record Rapid 111" from the German manufacturer Agfa (Bayer-Leverkusen) from the 1980s. The number 111 stands for a cardboard-thick, white, glossy baryth paper. The first digit (hundreds place) indicates the paper thickness - 1 means cardboard thick. The second digit provides information about the color - 1 stands for white, 2 for chamois and 3 for ivory. The third digit says something about the surface - 1 stands for glossy, 2 for semi-matt, 3 for matt, 4 for noble matt.³ 
(Christoph Fuchs, 2025 transl. by deepL)

Notes:

1
Tobias G. Natter, Gustav Klimt – The Complete Paintings, Cologne 2012, pp. 288–290.

2
Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea, New York 1906, pp. 52–54.

3
Foto Vogel, Grundlagen der Schwarz-Weiß Fotografie. Die Kennzeichnung von Fotopapieren, http://www.fotovogel-mg.de/Papiere_1.htm (4.5.2024)