»Nothing […] is anywhere ever simply present or absent.« – Jacques Derrida

Was there something? Or nothing?

With no horizon, one’s view into the distance is impeded. Scanning, searching, one’s gaze comes to a standstill in Leon Kirchlechner’s photographs. The eye may slow, but it doesn’t find repose. The peace is not contemplative: it is restless. The restricted field of view has a narrowing effect. It makes the room strangely dislocated, denies me the geographical coordinates that would give me a feeling of safety. And so, even as the onlooker, I remain dislocated in the usually centrically, often symmetrically composed images. I can’t make sense of this centrality. Nor is it reassuring. Although it gives me pause, it doesn’t offer anything for me to grasp. It’s not the enjoyable, thought-provoking stillness that many works of art inspire. Rather, it’s an oppressive, constricting stillness, one that causes alarm.

»I was immediately enthralled by what I saw,« explains Leon Kirchlechner. »An inky black hole opened up suddenly and incomprehensibly in the cold, bare ground. It appeared to swallow the light. The unstructured, almost two-dimensional black was deceptive; the thought of falling into it made me shudder. How deep was it? What was in it? Was there anything? Or nothing? I expected something. I suspected something. I knew that nothing would happen and yet I was as if hypnotised. Filled with an illusory fear I stood still – and looked at what I could not see.«

This experience has become encoded in his images. The unknown that prompts these seemingly so unremarkable existential tremors within us. That what one sees before oneself is not what one senses. Namely that what appears in the image is not even present. But that absence is exactly what arrests the gaze. The actual subject of the photograph, its raison d’être, is beyond the picture. “The absence of the imaged subject is nothing other than an intense presence, receding into itself, gathering itself together in its intensity,” wrote Jean-Luc Nancy. This is addressed fundamentally and unremittingly in Leon Kirchlechner’s images.
What is present in the image is, in fact, what is absent.
Text: Prof. Ulrich Fleischmann 

Co-Published by dienacht Publishing and Der Greif. The pre-orders will be shipped on June 1st.

Get a signed, numbered copy of Leon Kirchlechner’s photobook »NOWHERE« together with a limited, signed print. You can choose one of the four following photographs (see above). All four photographs are available as a limited edition of 5 copies, size 50 x 33 cm.

In case of purchase please indicate the photograph of your choice (№ 1 to № 4) in the comments field.
All orders will be shipped by June 6th.

Get your copy here (worldwide shipping): www.dienacht.bigcartel.com

After the shock comes the anger. It is disturbing when you see in real-time how lively human bodies dissolve into nothingness.

Laia Abril collected internet pictures of women who commemorate anorexia and photograph themselves doing it. She also collected instructions on how to get extra skinny, and posts in internet forums which demonstrate and document with what “lightness” and how baseless the young (most of the time) women addict themselves to this cult of losing weight. That in principle – in extreme cases – their vita is slanted towards destroying knowingly their bodies.

Thinspiration however is not a book aiming at shocking. The arrangement is elaborate and excellently realized. The pop up sites display “more”, and so you feel like diving into a world – exposing yourself to it – whose abyss you had not known before and did not want to know.

www.laiaabril.com/project/thinspiration/

Important is what is missing: an explanation, the orientation and the harmony on the pictures. In fact there is a text on the website which says, what it is not about, but the pictures keep their secret. They put the viewer into a condition, you are torn between curiosity, astonishment, fascination and weak and strong discomfort. The pictures show little and tell much, and this over-winning simplicity is what constitutes SISMO.

http://s-i-s-m-o.tumblr.com/

Rimaldas Viksraitis takes pictures of people in the rural areas of Lithuania. He photographs people who live a simple life often accompanied and soaked by alcohol, who hardly have any perspectives and do not expect them either. Anyway they are not hopeless pictures; they are full of easiness and lightheartedness, they are uncomplicated and funny although the reality – seen from the outside – probably is anything but funny. Rimaldas however does not compromise the people, he emphasizes the humanity – he often shows them naked, at home or outside, in unpoetic, rough but sincere pictures. He does not show their brokenness but vulnerability, love, grief, madness – the full life.

www.heden.nl

“(…) I don’t really want to know whether the characters read beatniks, nihilists, right-wing journalists, liberal gibberish or SF writers. Neither do I feel the need to identify them with the music they listen to. We can guess that they probably don’t listen to club music, for example (although they seem to enjoy the disco ball). (…) I think that Anti-accent, even though it portrays people involved in the ‘punk scene’, with all their artistic influences, this aforementioned ‘fall’ of the ideas has a marginal meaning. These photographs ‘are punk’ more than they ‘show punk’. They seem to rather invite you to ‘punk’, than guide you through all the sweaty rehearsal rooms. ‘Punk’ understood as a certain idea, an ethos, a rebellion, showing your bruised ass off to the middle-class conventions. ‘Punk’ that pushes you into action, that has you co-create a community. So, not to repeat anything, Anti-accent rather is a rehearsal room, than shows you one. A rehearsal room that’s familiar to anyone, who doesn’t come back home before the evening cartoons. These photographs seem to come alive with whatever we put into them ourselves.” – Mateusz Romanowski

Gabriel Orłowski was born in 1989; he lives in Warsaw, Poland, and is a member of Merkabah and Acid Lindgren, experimental hardcore bands.

The book does not have secrets; it does not show series, no completed work, no portfolio but just pictures. All in the same size and each one standing on it’s own. Photos you just take by the way, personally, empathetic, full of atmosphere.

10×15 is a collection of pictures, of beautiful and good photos and some which tell entire stories. And even if the book does not have secrets – the single pictures do. It does not make sense to discuss the book here, because it is all about the pictures. Get this book!

www.quentindebriey.com

Mit einem letztmaligen Aufruf möchte sich das freie Illustrationsmagazin vorerst verabschieden. Bei dem laufenden „Call for Entries“ kannst Du deine Arbeiten noch bis zum 15.05.2013 zu dem Thema: „Funeral/The End“ einreichen. Um der letzten Ausgabe eine ehrenvolle Beerdigung zu bereiten, entsteht das dritte Heft als gold, schwarz, graue Siebdruckedition. Weitere  Infos zur Teilnahme und wohin du deine Arbeiten senden musst, findest du im Internet unter: www.bird-magazine.de

Photography: Ieva Jansone
Design: Andrea Froneck-Kramer
Boxan Verlag, Kassel
Signed limited edition: 100
Paper: Munken 130 g
ISBN 978-3-923461-86-8 / ISBN 978-3-923461-87-5
www.ieva-jansone.com