Sylvia Ballhause Documentation

Transcription

1 Sylvia Ballhause Documentation

2 Sylvia Ballhause Coincidences 2010 ~ 2011

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4 Portrait (young man with cap and stitched horns) An old glass plate negative, found on the flea market, shows a young man with a cap and stitched horns on it. In the studio I photographed this plate with accurate light settings, while it was lying on a lightbox and on a black board in the same size. Due to the reflection it reveals its image not as a negative (as if you looked through) but as an positive image. What became visible and what became invisible in my image? On the one hand it is the portrait of a young man and on the other hand it is an old glass plate negative. In my image two seperate realities appear. They each represent their own photographic significant: a human being and a piece of glass with photo-technic emulsion. On the one hand something becomes visible what is normally invisible or out of focus in photography: the image carrier.one the other hand something what normally immediately draws attention, becomes almost invisible: the image information. year: 2009 image size unframed: 110 x 143 cm material: analog c-print presentation: wooden framework without glass

5 Portrait (young man with cap and stitched horns) detail

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7 The Munich Daguerre-Triptych One of the icons in history of photography is the Munich Daguerre-Triptych with the view of the Boulevard du temple in Paris, photographed by Louis Jaques Mandé Daguerre in When it was removed during world war II from the archive it became severely damaged by environmetal influences. Between 1972 and 1974 an attempt was made to restore the daguerreotypes, but remained without success. My photographs represent the three daguerreotypes in their today s condition. Clouds of bubbles, puddles of liquids and flashes of scratches cut across the images. At a closer look concrete details of a realistic image are visible: windows and a pitched roof of a house, lines of trees and chimneys. Now following questions arise: Shall one talk rather of photographies than of images on the surface of metal plates, even though the images of Daguerre are not visible any more? My answer was: yes, but only by means of appropriation or transformation. The photographic ruins of Daguerre become, transformed through the restorer on the one hand and through my exposures on the other hand, compensated through traces of chemical and mechanical intervention. year: 2010 image size framed: each 70 x 90 cm material: analog c-prints presentation: wooden framework without glass

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11 The Munich Daguerre-Triptych Detail

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13 Emulsion 1 (Alps) / Emulsion 2 (Spitsbergen) The images Emulsion 1 (Alps) and Emulsion 2 (Spitsbergen) represent surfaces of photo-chemical emulsions on two glass plate negatives found in private and public archives. Looking at them on a lightbox two black-andwhite landscapes are visible. Compared to the portrait of the»young man with cap and stitched horns«they consist of similar material but the two images (Emulsion 1 and Emulsion 2) reveal very few details of image informations. As in the daguerreotypes material and motif are merged into a new image. The represented reality joins with the abstractions of chemical and physical traces. Like fragments of memory the photographic image seems to be a noise in the background. In contrast the materiality of the image carrier appears real and concrete: Traces of wiping look like wafts of mist, crystal deposits like frost patterns and discolorations like water. The material itself appears like natural phenomenons in the images. year: 2011 image size Emulsion 1 (Alps) 143 x 192 cm image size Emulsion 2 (Spitsbergen) 112 x 88 cm material: analog c-prints presentation: wooden framework without glass

14 Emulsion 1 (Alps)

15 Emulsion 2 (Spitsbergen)

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17 The Strindberg gold sample During the engagement with the pictorial nature of photographic material I discovered August Strindberg s experiments. I was intrigued in paticular by his experiments with gold and the follwing quotation:»gold is sunlight / photographed / and / fixed«. How did Strindberg come to set his experiment in analogy to photography? What did he believe to see on his shining paper drafts? Artificially won gold or photographed sunlight? As the statement of seeing sunlight was already explored in this case, I decided to only document the goldpaper and the idea of it. Hence, I charged someone to take a photo of the goldpaper in the Royal Library in Stockholm. Accompanied by a text I present the image of the goldpaper on a scale of 1:1. Ruler, gray- and colorscale indicate the method of reproduction photography. This enhances the ambivalent character of the object, as it was formulated by Strindberg. year: 2011 image size unframed: 24 x 36 cm each material: digital c-prints presentation: wooden box-section frame with glass

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20 The Wedgwood leaf dish The procedure of manufactoring photograms is based on the idea that direct contact between the light sensitive material and the outside is sufficient to create an image of the outer world. During my research on a photogram of a leaf, I found a dish which is attributed to the chemist and photo pioneer Thomas Wegdwood and was part of his family s inheritance. Although it is not a photogram it shows something similiar to a photogram on the surface. Certainly nobody would argue that this as a photographic image. But why not? Compared with Strindberg s goldpaper the case is exactly the contrary: Strindbergs goldpaper could be considered as a photographic image carrier because of the chemicals used, but the pictorial nature seems questionable. The dish however shows a real image on the surface but is not a photographic image carrier. Both objects the green dish of the Wegdwood company and Strindberg s goldpaper cannot be identified as photos but pose the question: What is to be seen here, what is visible? year: 2011 image size unframed: text 24 x 36 cm / image 36 x 42 cm material: digital c-prints presentation: wooden box-section frame with glass

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22 former Pierogi-Gallery, Spinnerei Leipzig, Germany»Coincidences«, solo exhibition, 2011, installationviews

23 solo exhibitions 2008»Shooting myself / himself«gallery Helmut Hartmann, Wien, Austria 2009»Shooting«, projectroom Holden, Darmstadt, Germany 2010»Umgekehrt«, Merkel Collection, Mannheim, Germany 2011»Coincidences«former Pierogi-Gallery, Spinnerei Leipzig, Germany group exhibitions 2006 Darmstädter Fototage, Darmstadt, Germany 2008 F/STOP 2. International Photography Festival Leipzig 2010»Shoot! La photographie existentielle«, Les Recontres d Arles, France 2010»Shoot! Fotografie existentiell«, Photomuseum Braunschweig and c/o Berlin, Germany 2010»Lieblingstücke«, Kunstverein Heidelberg, Germany biographical informations Sylvia Ballhause was born in 1977 in Halle (Saale), Germany. After an apprenticeship as graphic-designer she graduated in communications design with a focus on photography in Darmstadt, Germany, in From 2007 to 2011 she studied at the»hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst«the Academy of visual arts Leipzig, Germany, by Christopher Muller and Beate Gütschow (class of artistic photography, graduation with degree). She participated on several exhibitions and international photofestivals. contact Sylvia Ballhause Christianstrasse 11 D Leipzig Germany mobile info@sylviaballhause.de homepage: