Martin Zellerhoff: Ran ans Motiv

Texts (German/English) by Hans-Jürgen Haffner, Ursula Panhans-Bühler
64 p with 60 coloured and 10 illustrations in duotone
250 x 200 mm, softcover

ISBN 978-3-86442-122-8

29,80 €

Taking up the Motif

What you see is what you get – this has long ceased to ring true in the digital age. When Martin Zellerhoff (*1964), after editing one of his analog ­photographs using his computer, places it alongside ­unprocessed analog images, he produces slight interferences that ­immediately activate the viewers’ com­parative memory. The photographer, who worked as an assistant to ­Thomas Struth for over a decade, and from 2007 to 2010 was responsible for the artistic production of Christopher Williams, sets out to accomplish by artistic means exactly what the digital image devices are not able to provide: a dialogic structure. The media appa­ratuses have formed a discursive monopoly, a wall of media, as Vilém Flusser calls it. Penetrating the ­medium is reserved to those who cross the fine line ­between image and art, who question the mechanisms of how cultural value is attributed, who can distinguish in his work between conceptuality and craftsmanship, photo-technical mastery and artistic skill. The book works, ­according to Martin Zellerhoff, »just like my ex­hibitions« by stimulating the simultaneous viewing of images in ­varying order using foldouts, sight lines and voids.