Klaus A J Riederer – Fine Art Photography

The question of how to define art has intrigued me for a long time. As the dilemma has proven to be a quite complex one, the alternative way to approach it is to study the artists themselves instead. Under this topic I photographed given the suitable possibility. In Summer 2001 I spend three days in Mystera, a small village 1000 km east of St. Petersburg, documenting the life of former icon painters, who nowadays paint wonderful jewelry boxes. More recently, I have been much more effort for the project.

I have been the fortunate first Finnish photographer ever to get the Hôtel Chevillon residence grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. I stayed six months in 2004 (February - July) in the idyllic village of Grez-sur-Loing, some 70 km south of Paris, where Nordic artists established a colony in the 1880s. Being so closely tied to many (Swedish) colleagues of fine art, i.e., oil & aquarelle painters, writers, draftsman and fine art printers (no other photographer), I got anew fascinated by the forma, or the essence, of an artist. That is, how each artist is unique in her/his own way but still perhaps - that is the key question - possesses characteristics that are common to all members of the field of fine art but not to its outsiders. In Grez, I studied behind the camera lens all the (willing) artists during my stay there and took several hundreds of frames of them, mostly using large (4*5) and medium (6*7 cm) format film.

In my exhibition series Artist at work I will study the life of artists. I wish to explore the world of artists, find similarities between different craftsman, regardless of age, gender, cultural background and line of work. I am not only interested in their professional work but also in their everyday life and surroundings, in finding the elements of art makers and of making art.

Works

I am afraid, you need to wait and come to the exhibitions to see my most recent works in Part II. However, you can see the previous works from Part I (shown in Wågermanska Konsthallen, September 12 – 30, 2005) by clicking here (or the image above), which opens a new window.

Technique

Except the newest works in Part II, I have taken all the photographs shown in the premiere exhibition with film cameras (24*66 mm & 6*7 cm formats) in France during Summer 2004 and scanned them at the highest resolution, oil-mounted. All prints are (digitally) hand-made using best-quality rag-paper / canvas and Ultrachrome-pigmented inks, which brings out the finest details in an esthetic form and guarantees the best life-span (over a century, glass-framed and protected from direct sunlight).

Artist at Work [invited]

Works

Technique

Exhibition calender

Further information

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