C-print / 2009 / 384 x 87 cm [ 4 segments à 96 x 87 cm ]
view from Festung Hohensalzburg on the city of Salzburg, Austria. 360° panoramic view.
Read project description here.
C print / 2007 / 55 x 76 cm
view from Empire State Building on Manhattan, NYC, United States.
Read project description here.
[ details ] C print / 2009 / 70 x 61 cm
view from Acropolis at Lykavittos mountain, Athens, Greece.
Read project description here.
C print / 2007 / 70 x 70 cm
Cyclorama / view from Eiffel Tower, Paris.
Read project description here.
C print / 2007 / 40 x 30 cm
Read project description here.
C print / 2007 / 320 x 40 cm [ 8 segments à 40 x 40 cm ]
View from Arc de Triomphe on the city of Paris, France.
Read project description here.
EN
Why do the images we shoot on travels, collect in photo albums and show around to friends look so much alike? Do all people experience the same? Do they see the same things the same way? Do the pictures taken home from our journeys represent what we have encountered? Is photography more than just a medium to remember and shape memory? And, what is the impact on our perception of the world having seen all these sites on photographs before seeing them with our own eyes? Is there some kind of interaction between the subjective and the collective memory?
With these questions in mind, I started focussing on certain popular sites around the world. Collecting thousands of tourist photo snapshots via the internet, I began reassembling these by collage.
Their superimposition makes the focal point of the photographs become visible. While each layer is provided with transparency (additive blending), the motive focused on becomes blurred out, and the peripheries of the tourist gaze become visible. The points of interest are transformed into vanishing points. As a result, the periphery of this gaze is processed into a spatio-temporally compressed space of the popular view, where formerly hidden details emerge.
DE
Der soziale Gebrauch der Fotografie ist heute allgegenwärtig. Die Souvenirfotografie zählt zu den beliebtesten Sujets der Medienamateure des Alltags. Die von Bittner exzessiv angewandten Überblendungen von Amateuraufnahmen abstrahieren den konkreten Gegenstand der Alltagswahrnehmung und lösen ihn von der Abbild-Logik des fotografischen Dokumentarismus. Damit wird die Fotografie von ihrem sozial legitimen Status dokumentarischer Evidenzstiftung und Erinnerungskultur abgelöst. Die dadurch in Gang gesetzte künstlerische Wahrnehmungskultur dezentriert den touristischen Gebrauch der Fotografie.
Die Innovation der künstlerischen Intervention besteht nun darin, die Räume zwischen den Fotografien sichtbar zu machen. Überlagerungen, Schichten und Abweichungen versuchen, Image-Stereotype in oszillierende Zwischenräume aufzulösen. Die Schönheit künstlerischer Subversion zeigt sich da, wo sich die rasche Wiedererkennbarkeit des Reiseandenkens wieder in die Unendlichkeit der Imagination verflüchtigen kann.
[ Ramón Reichert ]
DE [ .pdf ]
