"fallende Tulpen"

gelatin silver print on baryta

"Life is time. I understand reality through imagination. My pictures preserve things from disappearing when I succeed in giving them form."
Manfred Paul¹

Manfred Paul's photography deals with the existential question of human existence. His images become parables that help us understand the transience of all things as a condition of life.² The drooping, wilted flowers vividly illustrate the transition from life to decay. Paul thus refers to the Baroque motif of vanitas, in which the passing of time and the transience of all life are central themes. Paul's tulips do not appear as a decorative arrangement, but as a symbol of the silence of decay – a theme that runs through his entire photographic work. His works are characterized by a profound exploration of time, memory, and transience. Paul's photographs are not mere documentations of reality, but expressions of an inner gaze, transforming the captured moment into a space of quiet, contemplative observation. His still lifes, such as this one, can be understood as photographic meditations on the end, in which the fleeting nature of life takes on a visual form. Compare, for example, André Kertész and his Melancholic Tulip from 1939.
Formally, Paul follows in the tradition of New Objectivity and East German photography of the 1980s and 1990s, which is characterized by austerity, reduction, and depth. Falledne Tulpen (falling tulips) is an exemplary work of this tradition: a reduced composition that elevates the everyday to the timeless.
(Christoph Fuchs, 2025 translated by deepL)

Notes

1
Quoted from wikipedia (accessed 5.6.2025)

2
Manfred Paul, Berlin Nordost 1972–1990: Am Rande der stehenden Zeit, Berlin 2012, n. p.