ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Josef Dreisörner’s analogue black and white photographs allow him to capture far more than any color photograph – above all the human face – with strong authenticity. His Klimsch Unikat Close-up Portraits create unique, visually and psychologically precise insights into the human face – an aesthetic that initially alienates the viewer, but is precisely intended in the consistency of its depiction. These human faces are unadorned, direct and truthful. Josef Dreisörner’s portraits are a consistent alternative to the arbitrary images of people that have been passed through countless filters and presets, produced and shared millions of times a day, in which every mistake has been corrected and every desired aesthetic result has been produced retrospectively.

Klimsch Reproduction Camera; Apo-Ronar 1:9 f=600mm; Direct exposure on 20x24 inch B+W 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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