DIALOGUE THROUGH GLASS / 2024 – ongoing
Cyanotype printing process / each motif in unique variations and various sizes
On my way –
With a simple analogue camera, I sit at the window in public transport and press the shutter. This simultaneity of statics and speed is a moment of consciousness. To be on the road, to be anonymous, to simply exist in the moment.To look at the viewer – to look at myself – Silhouettes of faces and landscapes are unique. What I see passes by and becomes invisible.The only reason for the journey is to record it.
Katja Liebmann
READING KIERKEGAARD / 2002
10 x 8 plate camera / 5 min exposure time, silver gelatine paper, 25 x 20 cm, 10 x 8 inches
In Berlin, in the year 2002, I set up my large-format plate camera and read some philosophical writings of Søren Kierkegaard. While reading, I would sometimes release the camera’s shutter for an exposure of five minutes. I studied the texts for precisely the duration of the exposure.
Kierkegaard’s philosophical understanding of time as something that must be lived existentially inspired me. The image depicts the act of reading during the exposure; past, present, and future merge. The enormous old plate camera, which captures Kierkegaard’s texts so precisely that one can read them along, virtually draws the past into the picture.
I myself embody a moment of the present while reading. The resulting image is the future; reveals itself only later. And fascinated by the crispness of the camera lens, depicting the text so crystel clear that the viewer is drawn in I was.
Katja Liebmann