The Concept for The Between The Light Exhibition in Freiburg
I was super thrilled and excited when I learned that I will have the opportunity to exhibit my work in Freiburg in the the Bahnhofsturm. This excitement lasted for almost and hour until I realized how many challenges this will bring along. Of course we all want to go out and show the world how good we are, what fine images we take, but then again, do we really make photographs that matter? Who wants to see them? With the excitement the doubts came simultaneously.
Today I am almost done preparing everything including invitation cards, an exhibition catalog, the concept itself, all the prints, the frames and some kind of advertisement. Looking back what helped the most to overcome my fears and doubts was just starting to do it. We have a tendency to over complicate things and sometimes it is just easier to simply do it!
Before I was able to plan the exhibition I visited the exhibition place. I was overwhelmed by the stunning view from the 11th & 12th level of the Bahnhofsturm and initially my doubts grew as there were quite famous images hanging at the wall where my work was supposed to hang in only half a year from now. Dirk Brömmel a very famous German photographer and artist was showing his “Kopfüber” series here. The modern images all perfectly arranged and printed on Alu-Dibond looked amazing and fascinating. I knew that my work would look completely different at these walls, to say at least. Fortunately the curator of the venue was super kind and helped my to regain confidence. She told me that they were looking for something new, that contrasts with the current exhibition. In a nice talk we agreed on the conditions and I promised to send a concept within the next weeks.
The preparation of a concept caused many sleepless nights. Do I want to print big, bigger than I usually do? How should my prints be presented? Which series do I want to show? I have to admit that the current work of Dirk Brömmel initially inspired me to go into the same direction, before I realized that it wasn’t me and my work. I remembered my ideas and my way of embracing small prints as an intimate experience. This gave me confidence again to simply follow my heart and my own ideas. Now with this decision made the concept was way easier to finish and I finally submitted my ideas to the curators.
Printing
Besides many other tasks, like designing a catalog and flyers, I was mainly busy ordering material for a total of 35 prints which all needed to be printed and framed.
These 35 images were meant tol be printed in 3 different size categories, ranging from 17x17cm to 58x58cm in a total of 5 different frame sizes. I wanted to go from very small and intimate to big and impressive. The majority however was meant to be rather small than large.
The paper choice was easy. I decided to to all prints on Museo Silver Rag, which is an outstanding paper in my opinion. The glossy but subtly structured surface is brilliant for all my night photographs. It gives the scene a very natural look with deep blacks that add a lot to the mood of the scene. The slightly textured surface also a very pleasant haptic experience when holding the print in your hand. It works very nicely when matted on a high quality matte board.
Signing & Stamping
All my prints are carefully printed and I always stamp and sign them on the back outside of the image area to prevent the signature and stamp to shine through. I use two different stamps, one that indicates the print number and edition size as well as the year of the print. And a second stamp which is a original Japanese Hanko artist stamp. These are handmade individually stone stamps which a traditional Japanese stamp maker carefully crafts personally for the artist. Each one is unique and will be manufactured exclusively for one person. In Japan this has a very long tradition and I feel it adds the one little extra detail to my prints.
In the next post I will be talking about how I matted the prints and framed them.
