ENTRY DESCRIPTION
In the future, robots are expected to help, for example, in nursing or for loneliness, and to be used as service staff in restaurants. When these robots have a humanoid appearance, people even develop a certain empathy for the machines. But the feeling quickly changes if the machines look too human. This phenomenon, known as "Uncanny Valley," states that robots appear more sympathetic the more human-like they are - but only up to a certain point. A resemblance beyond that point is perceived by many people as creepy or eerie. This only changes again when a robot is no longer distinguishable from a human.

Camera type: Klimsch Praktika Process Camera
Lense: Rodenstock Klimsch Apo-Ronar 1:9 f=600mm
Film Format: 50×60 cm (20x24 INCH)
Direct exposure on a black and white positive photo paper

AUTHOR
When encountering the works of Josef Dreisörner, one discovers an artistic position in which conceptual creativity is combined with craftsmanship. Just as the act of creating a picture is an active process, so is the process that his pictures set in motion in the eye of the beholder. Seeing goes beyond simple representational recognition to become a productive process of perception.

His KLIMSCH UNIKAT portrait shots yield perspectives of the human visage with downright surgical precision – an aesthetic approach which may feel alien at first, but is intentional in its expressiveness. Although still committed to high aesthetic standards, in most Josef Dreisörner’s still lifes do not focus on aesthetic issues. Rather, it is his concern as an artist to draw the viewer‘s attention to socially relevant themes. The choice of this subject must indeed be considered as unusual. The fact that the viewer initially reacts in a disturbed manner is a matter of calculation. Only a longer engagement with the work reveals on the one hand the theme that moves the artist, on the other hand it deliberately leaves room for interpretation and should invite further discussion.

Such pictorial statements are mainly realised by so-called large format cameras. Of particular note is the Klimsch Praktika reproduction / process camera built in 1957 with a film format of up to 50×60 cm (20×24 Inch). Photographs are taken analogously on film or with direct exposure on black-and-white positive photo paper. When using the positive photo paper the captured image cannot be reproduced in analog photographic technology, and there is no option of analogue or digital post-processing. The captures on film are realized by means of the Palladium /Platinum Print process.

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