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Texte zur zeitgenössischen Fotografie und digitalen Bildkunst
Bromberg & Chanarin: Fig
The authors were commissioned by the institution Photoworks to do a photographical survey of Great Britain and its history. The book that came out of it is a lot more than that. Adam Bromberg & Oliver Chanarin, who after having worked for the Benetton Colors magazine, have produced four books, travelled through the UK, visiting historical museums as well as the homes of people they became interested in or hidden government anti-terror sites. They travelled across Africa or used images taken there on previous journeys and have included images from private collections and photos of murals in Italy. The book opens with two nondescript photos of two hills on which beacons were lit to warn of the coming of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The slim book that has about sixty photos, all shot in a similar desaturated color style by both the authors, and combines these with short descriptions or historical background information, will only work for a reader who is willing to fill the gaps. The method of editing is similar to that of W.G. Sebald or J.M. Coetzee in „Elizabeth Costello“, for example. We are asked to follow across giant gaps, those between the photos and the texts, between history and anecdote, we move along circles attempting to categorize the world around us through photography. Which is one of its oldest functions, and the authors come across it in historical and natural history museums. The will-full and free movement is not fanciful, it comes to stop at stories of the horrors humans inflict on humans, in Ruanda the same as in the UK, big stories known to everyone and little private stories they found because they asked the right questions. These gaps between the rational and irrational, between terror and hope, are there for us, to bridge or to let open, borderlines that are at once well-known and hidden. We can only listen and think, decide and react. Artists like Tacita Dean and writers like Alexander Kluge come to mind for having similarly followed hidden trails, asked the right questions, used a dead-pan approach to the scales and categories we devise to hide the dominance we seek. Needless to say Bromberg & Chanarin do little by way of photographical style or technique to make their work more interesting. They are good photographers interested in how the world works, and they go to wherever they believe they will find out.
On www.choppedliver.info/, their own website, the artists present the complete series. On 5b4.blogspot.com/2008/06/fig-by-adam-broomberg-oliver-chanarin.html, there is an informative and enthousiastic review.
On www.seesawmagazine.com/figpages/figinterview.html both are interviewed and provide background information.
25.09.2008
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