MANFRED WILLMANN

Blitz & Enzianblau (Lightning Flash & Gentian Blue)

Manfred Willmann, Austrian photographer and long-time editor of Camera Austria, presents his third profound artist book—following Schwarz and Gold (1981) and Das Land (2000)—composed of works from the year 2005. Intense close-up and fragmented views of animals, plants, everyday objects, people, and intimate moments are interrupted by an occasional reproduction of only the backside of a sheet of Agfa color photographic paper. Having produced more than a thousand analog prints in 2005 from the series, Willmann only chose to look through the prints a decade later, and subsequently creating this intense collection of images. It brings together photographs that not only show the surface of the world, but also tell about the medium of photography itself and its very own possibilities to represent the world in its beauty, ugliness, and transience. Willmann exposes the texture of the medium of photography through his gritty details of daily life—whether it is a constellation, still life or a moment—isolated by his flash and always entirely free of sentimentality.

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