Discovering Photography at Berliner Liste 2016 - Top 8 Booths

Situated within Kraftwerk, the Berliner Liste already absorbed much of its symbolism. With her architectural photos of this iconic Berlin venue, Cecilia Zawadski doesn’t only pay a tribute to Kraftwerk, but also celebrates the brutalist architecture of the city. Her work is monumental and schematic, ideally displayed at its birthplace.

Polished photographs made by Andrey Kezzyn are not only aesthetically pleasing, but symbolically layered. Spinning off of the most famous biblical and historical themes, the photographs of this Russian artist are all staged, which gives them a particularly theatrical appearance. They are performances, alluding to the parables of life and contemporary distortion of universal values.

One of our favorite from the section, Juergen Bartenschlager is a true painter in essence. The displayed photographs are in fact a commentary on humanity. By closely photographing and blowing up the unlit mobile phone screens, the artist shows how finger swipes make different moves perhaps, but they are in essence - the same, just like the owners of photographed phones, who come from different cultural and religious backgrounds. His other two series are also close-ups of water rays and vinyl records, but unlike the mobile phone series, Bartenschlager intervenes here by enhancing color, thus alluding to the photographed matter (in the case of vinyl - the name of the photographed albums).

One of the thematically darkest booths belongs to the British photographer, Adam Goodison, whose series follows one narrative. A traumatic personal story runs through the photographs of nature and deep woods. Accents in the photos come from the lit portions of autumn leaves, which appear to evoke something lost, something hidden, something for which the wood-walker is looking. Conceptually coherent, Goodison’s series of photographs exits the boundaries of the medium and enters the domain of contemporary conceptual art.

Photographic experiments by Julius Gnoth show the artist’s inventiveness in exploration of the medium. He is inspired by urban and natural environment alike, while often mirroring one off of the other. Double exposure comes as the favorite photographic technique of the artist, where the overlapping happens in the camera and not in the Photoshop. The final frame is still decided upon later, when the photographer crops and finishes up the appearance of his work.

Stereoscopic Landscapes made by Robert Laatz are a thought-provoking series on his nine journeys through the South American countries Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. Taken with a Russian medium format film camera, the double-landscapes uncover flaws that are the very essence of what makes these diptychs unique and engaging.

Saskia Boelsums is a Dutch photographer and her Netherlandish heritage clearly shines through her work. All of the photographs of landscapes or still life uncover the connection with the 17th century masters of the genre. The dark tones, baroque-like contrasts and clarity of the detail is stunning, as Boelsums’ photographs balance between the real and surreal.

Finishing the tour of the Photography Section, we come across the works of Petula Girndt. Male nudes she photographs are the means of expressing passion, feeling and utter exposure of the human condition. Corporeal imagery is only one of the elements of Girndt’s photography, while others remain much more visceral. When photographing, the artist uses a digital camera, but then exposes large sheets of photographic paper in the dark room, thus creating the pieces that come close to the organic, analog photography.

Images (c)Widewalls and courtesy of Stefan Maria Rother