politics unmasked
Artistic and political interest led photographers Angelika and Bernd Kohlmeier (born 1962 in Munich and 1953 in Cuxhaven respectively) to accompany sixteen Members of the German Bundestag on election campaign tours. Not bound by the terms of a commission, the artists were at liberty to decide what they photographed and when. In doing so, they deliberately opposed the kind of media imagery so omnipresent in our times. They employed analogue technology, developed their negatives in the traditional way and printed their photographs on classic black and white barite paper. In addition, they took pictures only in natural light and – most importantly – they did not stage their motifs.
The exhibition shows each Member of Parliament in a sequence of three photographs. At least one of these is a largescale portrait. These pictures frequently resemble snapshots, deliberately out of focus, taken from an angle and with the subjects in shadow. Occasionally, the face is cut off by the edge of the photograph or pushed to one side, turned away from the viewer or shown from behind. All these features normally rank among the ‘deadly sins of photography’ and would never appear in a classic studio portrait, which nowadays would also be retouched at the computer.
(text by Andreas Kaernbach, Curator of the German Bundestag’s Art Collection)
politics unmasked
