Why photography?

It is the “attraction of reality”, the immediate sensory experience of worldly things, which is evoked in the photographic image.

There is nothing more exciting than ‘reality’, and with this word I now describe what we always experience and perceive in our concrete life-worlds and in the mode of sensory perception right now! Now I see this or that, and at the same time it is also clear to me: In this moment it definitely is not a dream nor a memory nor some fantasy but a wide awake perception of the world, the first beginning of all other possibly following subsequent consciousness executions, which are not sensory perceptions.

Nowhere else does the world offer itself as intense as the real world-wonder as by appearing as shape, color, shadow and light, and this way generating my unshakable certainty of an ‘It is!’ Here occurs the starkest and clearest reference to things, the highest alertness and also the most glorious grace we can experience. No dream, no fantasy, no memory, no imagining, no simulation, no conceptual construct can come close to this experience.

And I do not question that imagination and even memory have roles to play when viewing a photograph. This is the case even with seeing in general, i.e. even if no technical media is involved. There is by no means a ‘pure’ sensory perception, rather a person’s view is constantly struggling for meaning and significance, which incorporates its own experience, interests and desires while watching. And so seeing itself is a kind of ‘construct’. But one that, in addition to the other mentioned forms of consciousness, holds the strongest, brightest and clearest reference to the world.

Now one could argue that it is always also about the non-visible in photography.  Isn’t one subject of photography that which is mostly overlooked in everyday life, the strange, the enigma and the mystery? I am actually of this opinion. But this ‘darkness’, not viewable in a sensual way, is not really somewhere else. It is hidden in an inconspicuous manner in the visibility itself.

The various art forms reflect what has been said up until now. They all feed in many different ways from our various consciousness executions like seeing, hearing, remembering, wishing, fantasizing, etc. And thus painting, sculpture, written word or music certainly have their attraction. But nothing, however, gives us the original “attraction of reality” as strongly and clearly as the photographic image, precisely because it—despite the indwelling artificiality and constructiveness—is most intensively intertwined with said sensible world experience and represents it itself.

For the photographer, this state of affairs manifests again in a different way: One’s own photographic work with its constantly recurring sequences and relations are present when viewing a photograph. Knowledge: I (or the other) was a witness on the spot, there was this hour, minute, second, there were those circumstances, this perspective and this light. So, it actually happened back then! The entire photographic process and the sensual world-reality supporting it is included in the photo in a hidden way: The wandering, looking, the relation, the being-attracted and being-repelled, the continuing gait, the photographic “collection” of sensory views presenting themselves. In this way, the photo is enriched with the world to the highest degree.

Why photography then?

It needs no creative re-creation of the world.
The understanding glance is enough.
Only a little more than what is always already there.

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