Critics Pick

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

"The subsequent industrialization of camera technology only carried out a promise inherent in photography from its very beginning: to democratize all experiences by translating them into images."

- Susan Sontag, On Photography, In Plato's Cave

Oil paintings from the Renaissance and the Baroque were primarily created for patrons of the wealthiest class. Influential clients celebrated their sense of entitlement by commissioning artists to create flattering portraits, still-lives, and religious scenarios with implications of ownership.

My photographs, by their very nature, although formally inspired by these traditional oil paintings, transform this intrinsic elitism into a classless, more democratic concept.

I was working in a commercial photo studio in Berlin taking glamour shots when I made the first images for my series Menschenkunde. My employer introduced glamour photography to the German public.

I found it fascinating to observe most women's physical and, even more importantly, mental transformation in front of the camera. To play the role of a glamorous star for a few moments and create a memory of it in permanent photographic form seemed to be ultimately desirable in a city that had been overshadowed by its dark and repressive history for so many years.

Glamour photography, like publicity, is a product of a capitalistic and democratic society. According to John Berger, the happiness of being envied is the definition of glamour. The desire for envy had been long awaited by young residents of Berlin.

This commercial portrait experience, as well as assignments photographing toys, Christmas ornaments, and medical devices with much attention to details, has greatly influenced my series Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht, from the choice of camera and light equipment to my models playing unfamiliar roles.

Now I am also aware of the influence of childhood experience on my work. My mother is a seamstress, and from her I learned to appreciate beautiful fabrics and acquired the skill to drape and fashion them.

I grew up in Nuremberg, a city filled with imagery from the Renaissance as well as Medieval and Baroque art. As a child with artistic talent I was exposed to oil paintings early on. My Catholic upbringing added a sensitivity for and interest in religious iconography.

However, graphic representations of martyrdom, displayed in many churches in Europe, agonized me as a child. Symbolism, evident in religious imagery as well as secular portraiture and still-lives, distracted me from the gruesome depictions of tortured saints.

Historical symbols don't translate easily into contemporary language. In my photographs these symbols add a certain awkwardness to my models' poses, whether it's the holding of a book between spread fingers, the gaze toward heaven, or the pressing of a blood soaked cloth against one's breast.

Adding contemporary symbols like a laptop, fashion jewelry, or a wristwatch seems to establish a connection between the past and the present, also adding another level of inquiry.

My symbols don't come necessarily with art historical labels attached to them, therefore the viewer is invited to invent new meanings. This is the method with which I create a fantasy world for my models as well as for the viewers of my photographs.

I use a large format camera and high contrast lighting to emphasize details only visible in photographs.

Like Caravaggio in the 16th, and Julia Margaret Cameron in the 19th century, I employ friends, and sometimes strangers I met for the first time. My sitters give themselves away, perhaps by showing a bit of dirt under their fingernails, wearing makeup that's too heavy, or carrying the imprint of a too tight sock on one's leg. We can all relate to these small clues of individuality.

My images demonstrate an apparent carelessness in the execution of details that poses a stark contrast to the attention I give to depicting symbols. However, with this purposely displayed clumsiness and the role-playing of my non-professional models I create an ironic take on the topics of classical oil painting.

The three series Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, and Seelensucht deal with subjects of traditional oil painting, but even more so imply opposites.

In Menschenkunde, ordinary people are posing as members of an upper class from the past. In Felsenfest, I comment on people's interpretations of fact and faith. In Seelensucht, Christian martyrs pose for the camera after they have been tortured to death.

The series I'm working on now comments on another seemingly contradictory topic, the suicides of people who live so-called perfect lives. I photograph people assuming the roles of famous Americans who have killed themselves.

These images once again borrow from the history of oil painting; I create vanitas still-lives by depicting lavish interiors as places of suicide. I show our society's elite inhabitants, immersed in their wealth and power with myriad possessions and exquisite taste, (using architectural magazines as guidance) but nonetheless, miserable and unhappy.

Here is where publicity's promise of happiness through envy and glamour is proven wrong.

- Angelika Rinnhofer

CRITIC'S STATEMENT

German artist Angelika Rinnhofer grew up surrounded by the visual opulence of Catholic churches in Bavaria.

She spent church services in fearful awe, absorbing the images of tortured saints and martyrs that lined the walls. It was an unforgettable experience that she now draws upon as an artist.

Trained as a photographer in Germany, Rinnhofer started posing people in bygone costumes, in postures, lighting, and composition inspired by the Old Masters.

Not tied to the visual language of just one painter or one period in time, the photographs nevertheless are heavily inspired especially by Albrecht DŸrer, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio, by Mannerism and the Renaissance.

Rinnhofer developed her photographic style while working on the portrait series Menschenkunde. The images for her first series are not portraits in a classical sense. They reveal little about the personality or status of the sitter. There is no narrative.

The group images in her series Felsenfest reconnect her to the religious content of church paintings. This intense project examines the lives and tortured deaths of Catholic martyrs.

In the style of allegorical church paintings, the martyrs are not depicted in the gore of their torturous moments, but in stylized recreations of those events.

With her third series Seelensucht, Rinnhofer returns to the sole figure. If the Felsenfest series captures the final act of the human drama, then the Seelensucht series sums up the epilogue. The martyrs seem resurrected, physically healed, and at peace with their fate.

Rinnhofer's images of martyrs tell the stories of people who stood up for their religion, and against all odds did not recant their beliefs.

While all of her photographs are based on actual martyr stories, Rinnhofer withholds the identity of the martyrs to make the images less about specific stories and more about humanity. Cast deep in the past, these stories still bear significance for us today.

- Hannah Frieser
Director, Light Work