"Schlangenmosaik II"

gelatin silver print

The snake rituals of Gabriele Rothemann defy any classificatory order, they are photography and drawing, documentation and still life, devotional picture and allegory at the same time. It is a poetic game of meaning of appropriation and transformation, which gains its persuasive power in the rare appropriateness of conceptual design and artistic form. The means and process of the work play a decisive role in this. The work on the myth of representation programmatically goes hand in hand with an archaeology of its own medium. The analogue photographs are captured on 4 x 5 inch negatives with a large-format camera. The film used, a Technical Pan from Kodak, which production was discontinued many years ago, is itself already a myth. For the project of the snake rituals the ' last' roll of this extremely hard drawing material, especially developed for architectural photography, is used. In order to get the finest grey shades out of this orthographic line film, a special Technidol developer is required, which of course includes mixing the material in the darkroom by hand. In the digital age, such alchemical craftsmanship is probably best suited to guarantee the truthfulness of the images.
(Sebastian Sagittarius)