Sabine Maria Schmidt 

 

The city as a stage

 

Those who are watching today how amateur photographs are taken will note that hardly any images are produced in which the photographer has not depicted him or herself. The world becomes a stage, the city a backdrop for their own self-portraits. Less attention is given to the objects, rather one discovers that they become a new background for the individual’s portraiture. As an environment, a city is designed for people who do not personally know one another. Despite this fact, they build an elaborate society together and in turn, a good life. Cities are always designed as a platform upon which one lays the ideas for an ideal life. Already in the 15th century one sees conceptually-designed urban spaces which provide a framework for a human society resembling that of a theatrical stage set. “Urban Stage” is the title of Gudrun Kemsa’s exhibition. Her work moves away from an exclusive look at architecture towards the urban stage event. But for which type of theatre? That of the individual?

 

As well as belonging to the fashion, advertising and studio photography, the so-called street photography belongs to authentic photographic genres that have exhisted since the invention of the Kodak box camera by George Eastman in 1888. Gudrun Kemsa’s work belongs, in the broadest sense, to the genre of street photography. When shooting photographs on the street and in other public places, people become protagonists and are assigned to the role of enliving the space. The first historical photographs of citys spring to mind where, passersby dissapeared due to the weakenss of the lighting equipment and the long exposure times of the plates. Here they are back. But what role do they play now? As coincidental passersby they are too present, they are also not staged, as decorative figures, the artist allows them too many proportions and demensions. As a representative of a job or member of society, they are too diverse and inconsistant. Their clothes and respective habitats give a certain assignment which remains, nevertheless, superficial. As so called crawling pictures, with numerous small and also narrative scenes, the photographs are too calm yet the historical connotations remain as does the choreography of live images, the so-called “tableaux vivants.”

 

The same principle applies to the location. Although the titles of the works permit precise geographical location, many places prove to be stereotypes of public places thus homogenizing “urban style.” They have become transparent, the vision of a modern reality. Especially in the new series the moment of the mirror, the reflection, multiplies an ever-reflecting multi-level reality which come into pictorial compression.  The mirror works simultaneously as a double look that incorporates other perspectives and views in the picture’s composition, thus creating a temporal-spatial level. Though Kemsa deliberately photographed selected places, they are neither historically or symbolically charged places in which she sets the scene.

 

Gudrun Kemsa began as a video artist; her images continue to reflect movement. The movements of passersby, essentially walking, awaken the fascination of the artist. She focuses mostly on groups of people, though sometimes individuals, who occupy public urban spaces on roads, walkways, intersections, stops, squares or parks.  In the series “Urban Stage,” Kemsa focuses on the architectural stock of skyscrapers, glass facades, shop windows, concrete walls and stairs. She extracts the cadence of everyday life from people and their spatial location. Some shots are classic, originating from the picturesque image and compositional rhythm of abstract art.

 

In recent years, Gudrun Kemsa has implemented a variety of series which remain closely connected.  In many photographs she has eliminated labels, advertising, street signs in favor of empty spaces which not only creates visual reassurance, but also confusion. “La Corniche” is an image which is in the center of an empty space. This image, however, holds true to the given situation. As if the consumerist content were deleted and the city were brought back to its original spatial and architectural completeness, order returning to an essence.

 

Other road images seemingly representative of simultaneous situations are, in truth, sequential. Occasionally she adds people or details to a picture without having a perceived montage. This is especially true of the “Choreographies” series which was published in the “Moving Images” catalogue. The tension between documentation and forgery, which digital techniques render easy, resonates well with the local show. Kemsa, however, refrains from using digital manipulation for her works.

 

Despite this, the people appear choreographed, the situations seem staged. In some photographs, the figures appear almost sculptural as if reconstructions of a Duane Hanson.  Everyone moves in his or her own time, in his or her own space. This reflects the lack of communication that exists between characters who are more accustomed to the juxtaposition. Communication does not take place in the development process, it is a prerequisite for the typifying of situations. Kemsa accepts no relationships, not even eye contact with the people. The zoomed shots of the series “Urban Stage” were taken from a long geographical distance which is necessary for architectual and panorama-like embedding of the character in their respective environments. The camera lens overcomes the distance. The intentions during the shooting do not count, they have no importance for the pictoral compositions. In some works, we can only gather the location of the artist by the reflection of the space. She herself is never seen. It is nevertheless clear that the majority of work happens during shooting: the long wait for the right situation, the right moment, the staging done by the camera viewfinder. Sometimes Kemsa photographs analogue. This means that the scene is photographed in many moments and the best shot is then selected.

 

Everything in the pictures looks tidy. One finds no scraps of paper, no trash, no chewing gum, no cigarette butts on the ground. There is no visual, acoustic overstimulation from outside. They suggest, rather, a completely soundless silence, “standing outside of time…” As a result the remaining references such as for example warning signs (in “Broadway 1”) have a special value, making it perhaps the only dramatized moment in the photograph. There is no wind, no circulating air in the images, no smells, no animals, only rarely does one see objects that define the environment.

 

There are no threats in the pictures. Although some of the characters behave as if remote controlled or in a video game evoking memories of science fiction scenes, there is no evidence of the almost systematic monotoring of public spaces or the remote control of other systems. The cameras, which are directed towards the street and passersby, remain invisible.

 

The urban world that Kemsa retains in her pictures is not a cold world, but rather a light-filled and peaceful world. Mostly she works around lunch time when the light is bright and focused which thereby creates contrast and shadow effects. It is mainly the light that generates the formal structural element, the architecture must submit to the light. Contours are either resolved, obscured by dark shadows or lifted to illuminate sharp edges. There is no summer shutdown due to midday heat as seen in the photographs of  Walker Evans during the American Great Depression. There is rather a precise clarity to the images which is determined by calculated compositional thinking. This refers to the precise definition of the image’s space, the lines in the architecture and landscape, the exact assignment of vanishing points, the attention to color, light and shadow and an area-based image composition. Finally, the construction of her photographs happens in the choice of extreme image formats. Sometimes she uncovers the motif through color. Her photographs compete with the staged images of the advertising world which generate processed and manipulated images.  The shop window as a “cultural factor,” first proclaimed by Werkbund which was founded in 1907, has long ago become an adequated alternative to the world of reality. Passersby are no longer in front of the shop windows looking in, rather they become part of the window as do dolls and advertising images.

 

One should note the reciprocal transfer of the film and photographic planes in Kemsa’s work. The two-channel video work “Queens” (2012) shows how the artist develops the interface between film and photography. “Queens” is an infinite-acting schedule that is held by the camera in real time. The clear experience contexts of space and time are broken by generating the journey to an infinite loop. It appears as if backstage scenery of the houses, construction sites, and fairy-tale like buildings are strung together. The doubling of the image creates complete confusion through which an asynchronous shift is performed.  The medial generated spatial perception is so completely different from our everyday perception that she demands a different level of focus and energy.

 

The photos also adhere to “asynchronous” shifts. Although many of the photographs look as if they were taken in a single moment, they wonderously transcend that moment creating an “over time” feeling reminiscent of portraits in which the entirity of a person seems

summarized. There are no situational moments within the meaning

of a documentary detection of spesific events. There are no subtle shifts. Kemsa’s photographs are as such staged documentaries, giving information about the specific image vacillating between film and photography.

 

 

(Revised text script of the opening speech to Gudrun Kemsa „Urban Stage“ on February 1, 2013, at the Galerie Bernd A. Lausberg, Düsseldorf )

 

in: Floating Spaces - Gudrun Kemsa, Verlag Kettler, Dortmund, 2024, S.36.

 

Übersetzung Rachel Drucker, Korrektur Siobhan Meyer