SpallArt Collection - Picture of the Month

Picture of the Month

Picture of the Month – August 2019

Wolfgang Reichmann
Examining the Evidence of Reality

Margit Zuckriegl

Every photogram is a photographic image of reality. Produced with neither lens nor camera, it provides direct evidence of an object or an ensemble, without any enlargement, reduction or multiplying strategies, or any kind of image manipulation what is reproduced is the thing itself. The illustrated object is both the motif and the mode of image generation, because it is only the light-resistance of the material that forms a shadowy proof of the physical qualities of the targeted object.

In his photographic works, Wolfgang Reichmann has made research into the characteristics of objects, light and the darkroom into his basic work idea. He experiments with the specifics of materials and surfaces, their capacity to reflect or absorb light, to look translucid or to totally reject any internal sketch from using a source of light. And yet his version of one of the oldest photographic techniques is not a calculated, predictable process: by means of sensitive image-making, Reichmann provides the banal things of every day with an aura, a nimbus of the unique and the unrepeatable; he even attributes to a simple plastic bag a light evidence as an enigmatic sample from our over-rich pictorial reality. In the present photogram a carry-bag as used by Spallart's FOTO-RAUM becomes an impression, an examination of the material appearance of the object.

Reichmann's photograms display a soft, pictorial, finely shaded coloration, achieving coloristic values that are not characteristic of the prototypical photogram, which is limited exclusively to black, white and intermediate shades. The extremely long exposure times permit these magical color changes to take place and transform the initially conceived evidence of materiality of the photogram technique into a kind of illusionist painting with light.

(published in Eikon #106, 2019)