Texts to photographic series: Rainscapes, In bed with Lucy and Dolly scroll down English - Deutsch << home : david fried - contemporary art / kunst
Photographic works
In bed with Lucy and Dolly - Color Photograms
Mapping the temporal balance between water and air in the form of unique bubbles - which emerge as a result of dynamic systems that do not follow linear and hierarchal patterns of organizational behavior - Fried charts the fundamental economy of networks in nature. In varying chromatic tones, Fried depicts strictly non-biological membranes that evoke a strong resemblance to primordial living cells or biotech test-tube creations, and reminds us of just how fragile, yet adoptive the architecture of life is.
Fried creates large gaseous vesicles in a totally darkened room using infrared goggles. At the decisive moment before they fall, he photograms them onto grainless color sheet-film by triggering a colored point-light source above. He captures the shadows of these fleeting objects to make an image on a photosensitive support using only light and the light sensitive material. No camera or lens is used. What we see in his enlarged C-prints are the latent shadows and spectral aberrations of these transparent forms caused by the membrane’s curved surface. The object itself becomes the lens, subtly bending the light and altering its own image.
The title refers to Lucy (the early hominid “Mother”), to us (the “Myth”), and to Dolly-the-Sheep (what Fried ironically calls the “Missing Link”) in a dialogue that seeks orientation in a world in which man has moved from adapting to and controlling their environment, to designing life itself to fit it’s environment. With this work, Fried involves our sense of orientation in a world that has taken a biomorphic journey from the Cambrian Sea to the Sea of Science and it’s playpens of genetic engineering.
in bed with lucy and dolly No.32, No.36, 2003, color photograms, archival c-prints on diasec, alu. 130 x 200 cm
Rainscapes - Photography
At first glance, the colorful arrays of countless water drops in Fried’s Rainscape photographs appear to be falling galaxies - clusters of dripping light painted on the night sky. On closer inspection one sees that they are actually photographs of pure falling Rain.
Fried captures strongly individual patterns of rainfall on large format color film. Rich chromatic variations are revealed by the prismatic effect of light passing through each individual raindrop, evoking a spacious cosmic look. Fried’s large-scale Rainscape photographs exude a quiet replenishing quality that unloads poetically within the viewer.
Observing what gives rise to civilizations, or may ultimately lead to their demise, Fried sees freshwater as an issue of great importance in the 21st century. Since ancient times, with prayer and ritual - to science and its methods, humans have wished to influence the weather, and although the collective human pursuit has undoubtedly had profound affects on the ecosystem, we are luckily still unable to control bigger systems such as the weather. Rain still falls freely through the world’s trees, and harvesting hands before completing it’s cycle. However, access to - and usage of - clean water is being moved into increasingly privatized hands, servicing industry more than local needs and down river ecosystems. Fried’s Rainscapes portray sweet water at its birth and invites us to contemplate its worth as we become its temporary custodians.
Rainscape No.1, 2003. archival c-print on aluminum, 125 x 256 cm
Interview exerpt: with Eva Mayer / Meier Stadtmagazin November 2007
DF: “The inspirational kick for my “Rainscape” works came in April 1995 on the island of La Palma. Events there led to an ongoing series of non-digital large-format photographs of pure falling rain. Some look like millions of colorful galaxies painted on a night sky, while other images captured against cloudy dusk skies, appear more terrestrial.
The story goes: I was staying at a rented hut by a farmer family doing watercolors. They told me it hadn’t rained a drop in over one and a half years on the west side of the Island where we were. One day I bicycled up the 2400 meter volcano through the clouds, getting wet by them at 2000 meters, and I instantly felt rejuvenated. Later that night at a big local outdoor Fiesta, I began a spontaneous 6 hour rain dance – yeah, the live 17 piece band was incredible too! The 150 or so town folk and farmers thought I was totally nuts, but the kids really had fun joining in. The next day it actually did rain and the following night, all the farmers in the area brought me fruit and homemade wine in sincere thanks and wonder.
Weather is something that throughout the ages, humans have wished to influence and control by means of prayer and ritual, or by way of science and its methods. In 2003 there was a record drought in normally overcast Germany where I stay, and it was then that I began to document every night-time rainfall possible with an elaborate technique, which includes 8x10” film and up to 20,000 watts of flash. This is because my subject matter is essentially transparent and wants to stay that way!“
On Photography
"(...) Since Gutenberg’s press first liberated the written word - making information and communication more available to the masses - a lot has happened in the age of reproduction. However, soon after the printing press was celebrated, this powerful tool was also abused, and as people became mistrustful, they began to regard printed material more skeptically; hence the saying "To lie like Print“ was born.
To reform this notion, the graphic revolution and photography offered us so-called objectivity, and people began to say; "A picture is worth a thousand words“, in spite of the somewhat subjective role a photographer may play.
But it wasn‘t long before this medium also became the most powerful tool for manipulating consensus. From the cut-and-paste faked photos of yesteryear - to today‘s digitally created images, the photographic medium has utterly lost its credibility when presented as a factual record. And through the wide spread of PC‘s and programs like Photoshop, our sense of perceiving photographic images as reality has become so corrupted, that today we have no other choice but to say; "A picture lies like a thousand words“.
In turn, this situation gives rise to a new generation of photographic art that is liberated from the constructs of objective reality and our perceptual illiteracy. We are seeing more use of the photographic medium by visionary artists with a focus on concept and imagination.
And even though photography had once ejected painting from its previous depictive role, the presence of digital-style imagery in painting trends today ironically suggests that painting has become occupied by its own liberator. The power of this relatively young medium has once again had an impact on painting, one of the oldest and perhaps sincere forms of art. Does this reflect a certain dependency or addiction to reality-based but manipulated imagery in our cultures today? (...)“ - DF
note: all photographic artworks on this site are non-digitally created.
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Fotografisches Arbeiten
Regenlandschaften - Fotografie
Auf den ersten Blick erscheinen die Reihen zahlloser bunter Wassertropfen in Frieds “Rainscapes” (Regenlandschaften) wie stürzende Galaxien -Ansammlungen tropfenden Lichtes vor den nächtlichen Himmel gemalt. Erst bei näherer Betrachtung sieht man, dass es sich tatsächlich um Fotografien reinen, fallenden Regens handelt.
Fried bannt die höchst individuellen Muster des Niederschlags auf großformatige Film. Durch den prismatischen Effekt, wenn Licht den einzelnen Regentropfen passiert, entstehen reiche chromatische Variationen und erzeugen einen räumlichen, kosmischen Eindruck. Frieds “Rainscape” – große Fotografien strömen für den Betrachter eine stille, poetische Anmut aus.
Mit dem
Blick darauf, was zum Aufstieg von Zivilisationen oder zu ihrem schlussendlichen
Niedergang führen mag, sieht Fried Trinkwasser als das Problem des 21.
Jahrhunderts. Seit alters her haben Menschen den Wunsch gehegt, das Wetter
beeinflussen zu können, durch Gebete und Rituale bis hin zur heutigen
Wissenschaft mit ihren Methoden. Und obgleich dieses gemeinsame menschliche
Streben zweifellos einen tief greifenden Einfluss auf das Ökosystem hatte,
sind wir glücklicherweise immer noch unfähig, größere
Systeme wie das Wetter zu steuern. Wasser fällt immer noch frei durch
die Bäume dieser Erde und durch die Hände des Landmannes, bevor
es seinen Zyklus vollendet. Dennoch liegt die Herrschaft über den Zugang
und die Nutzung von frischem Wasser zunehmend bei der privaten Wirtschaft,
die der Industrie mehr dient als den lokalen Bedürfnissen und den Ökosystemen
flussabwärts. Frieds “Rainscapes” zeigen frisches Wasser
bei seinem Entstehen und laden uns ein, über seinen Wert nachzudenken
und so für kurze Zeit zu seinem Hüter zu werden.
DETAIL: Rainscape No.1,
Im Bett with Lucy und Dolly - Fotogramme
In seinen Arbeiten „Im Bett mit Lucy und Dolly“ zeigt Fried das flüchtige Gleichgewicht zwischen Wasser und Luft in Form einzigartiger Luftblasen, entstehend als Resultat aus dynamischen Systemen, die nicht den linearen und hierarchischen Mustern organisierten Verhaltens folgen. Er kartografiert so die fundamentale Ökonomie der Netzwerke in der Natur. In unterschiedlichen Farbtönen bildet Fried ausschließlich jene nicht-biologischen Membranen ab, die eine starke Ähnlichkeit zu den Ur-Lebenszellen oder den Schöpfungen im biotechnischen Reagenzglas besitzen und uns daran erinnern, wie stark und doch wie vergänglich die Architektur des Lebens ist.
Fried kreiert, ausgestattet mit einer Infrarotbrille, in einem vollkommen abgedunkelten Raum große Blasen und erzeugt im entscheidenden Moment ihr Fotogramm auf kornlosen Farbfilmbögen. Er nutzt die Schatten der - hier sogar transparenten - Objekte, um ein Bild auf den Film zu bannen. Er verwendet also ausschließlich Licht und lichtempfindliches Material, keine Kamera, kein Objektiv. Was wir auf seinen vergrößerten C-Prints sehen, sind die Schatten und die Spektralabweichungen der transparenten Formen.
Der Titel bezieht sich auf Lucy (die frühe Menschenmutter), auf uns (den Mythos) und auf Dolly, das Schaf (das Missing Link). Sie stehen in einem Dialog, der die Orientierung in einer Welt sucht, in der sich die Menschheit von der Kontrolle ihrer Umwelt bereits wegbewegt, hin zu dem unvermeidlichen Drang, unsere eigenen Vorfahren neu zu erschaffen. Fried nimmt uns mit auf eine biomorphische Reise vom Cambrischen Meer zur künstlichen Gebärmutter.
DETAIL: in bed with lucy and dolly, No.40, farb fotogramm
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