The photography of Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger
In this article by Alexandra Stara, the work of contemporary German-born photographers Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger is linked to having a shared interest in 'making strange': a device used for 'bringing visibility to the processes that shape our environment'. Stara states that Klenz and Weinberger are two of the most interesting contemporary photographers who are part of the growing movement 'producing landscapes and cityscapes representing our late-modern notion of place, revealing complex modes of inhabitation, appropriation, alienation and destruction without representing action, focusing instead on the settings within which it occurs'.
The two photographers have different focal points in terms of subject matter and technique, but their work shows 'common concerns within the topographic sensibility... share an investment in the elliptical, enigmatic and disorientating as mechanisms of estrangement from thinking anew of everyday and familiar subjects'.
Klenz focuses on the 'notion of "non-place"... the homogenous, transient spaces' with little or no means of 'cultural relevance'. The intention that such "non-places" exist I find a little debatable, as does the article's author, but the idea is interesting, that 'alienation to the archetypal "place"', as pictured above, can focus the critique on something more strange, something unsettling about the "home" as being unfamiliar. In one of her series, La Posa, she even blacks out the windows and doors of the buildings in the images, 'reducing the houses to a series of bare walls with sheer darkness pouring from their openings'. The engagement and opinion of the viewer is left open for interpretation, but there are definitely implications of abandonment, as if the 'claustrophobic walls, which are treated as geological elements themselves, map an enigmatic topography'.
All images reproduced from article
Stara, A., 2013, 'Making Strange': The Photography of Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger, History of Photography, Vol 37.3, pp 353-359
In this article by Alexandra Stara, the work of contemporary German-born photographers Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger is linked to having a shared interest in 'making strange': a device used for 'bringing visibility to the processes that shape our environment'. Stara states that Klenz and Weinberger are two of the most interesting contemporary photographers who are part of the growing movement 'producing landscapes and cityscapes representing our late-modern notion of place, revealing complex modes of inhabitation, appropriation, alienation and destruction without representing action, focusing instead on the settings within which it occurs'.
The two photographers have different focal points in terms of subject matter and technique, but their work shows 'common concerns within the topographic sensibility... share an investment in the elliptical, enigmatic and disorientating as mechanisms of estrangement from thinking anew of everyday and familiar subjects'.
Klenz, untitled, from the series Nonsuch, 2005
Klenz, untitled, from the series La Posa, 2008
Some of Thomas Weinberger's bodies of work have a united key concept: the idea of 'concealment and the denial of action, where the urban fabric itself is made to reverberate with mood and possibility'. These are images that tend towards a more detailed approach, as opposed to his other, larger-scale landscape images. The more panoramic the image, the more the viewer is 'wrenched back to the distance from which we attempt to take in the whole of the scene'.
I found this article to be a really interesting discussion of how some contemporary photographers are tackling the renewed challenge of finding a fresh way to explore capturing urban landscapes. Both Klenz and Weinberger invite us to rethink environments, 'its modes of construction, consumption and abandonment'. They both ensure there is a distance, or estrangement, for a viewer from an image, to ensure there is space for critical judgement, whilst keeping an entirely subjective openness for any viewer's interpretation. Theirs is a relevant way of looking at our 'built environment that does not attempt to simplify and rationalise'; it remains complex and unresolved.
Weinberger, Isardamm, 2004
'Displacement, loss of scale and proportion are expressions that work on two levels in Weinberger's images – the aesthetic and the ethical. It is precisely this play of what are effectively techniques of estrangement that succeeds in conveying the fraught relationship between man and nature, building and land, without losing the exhiliration of the work.'
Weinberger, Paradise 1, 2010
All images reproduced from article
Stara, A., 2013, 'Making Strange': The Photography of Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger, History of Photography, Vol 37.3, pp 353-359
Thank you Liz for sharing this article. I gave it a read at your suggestion and elements of it do resonate with my work. For example "the idea of the work of art as a device for rethinking the familiar and everyday". I also found interesting Vattimo's idea of "existential shock" and how they've applied this philosophy to the work of Klenz and Weinberger, whose work I found to initially elicit a sense of erie calm. I think the "shock-value" comes a little later, once you've fully digested the work.
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