The photographical view on a situation

It is a different nature that talks to the camera than the one that talks to the eye (...)

-Walter Benjamin

As independent, productive medium, photography is capable to show, what the eye sometimes may deceive. In his works Ansgar M. van Treeck photos become to the setting of situations.

There is not situation which is perfect, more a less it is the situation of somebody which is perfect. Every person has his situation. Communities, couples, families, the state or a company come into situation, which they were brought in, manage these or succeed in changing them. The situation that someone is in has for him direct and usually decisive concern. Who takes photographs, puts a ? on person oriented and influenced by their concern issue ? (Carl August Emge) in scene. Something that is put in scene is put on. To put something in scene means in general to perform or have an exhibit at a certain setting or place, that it is worthy or worthwhile to be shown.

Ansgar M. van Treeck shows famous personalities e.g. Earl Rainier, Michail Gorbatschow, Hosni Mubarak, Nelson Mandela or Wladimir Putin as well as John Cage or Walter Dirks. This deals with celebrities, with "Stars", who serve as an example, a representative or as an opinion maker for the wishes and hopes. Media presence is constitutive for their image. Insofar there are a lot of pictures of personalities from the politics and art in different types of media. Since the invention of the Camera Obscura, in a dark chamber, with a small opening to the world, the following media, the photograph functions as "light chambers" and the television as ?window to the world?. As such they are scenes of daily floods of images. Given this abundance there is the question, why one should exhibit some images out of this mass. All of them are marked by the desire to catch "the right moment", not to let the moment elapse without conserving it. The "right moment" usually is put on press gallery and the therefore is reproduced by the targeted flood of images. Surrounded by these other moments exist that show other scenes that usually stay unseen. The view of the photographer Ansgar M. van Treeck aims towards these scenes at the side.

"Clinton Car" does not show Clinton but only the assumed empty, full with clues of the situation of the travelling president. The inside of a car or just the specific architecture of a house is objective systems, which in a transferred sense captures a situation. In difference to Clinton ís car interior which seams like a find that seams composed, which wouldnít be regarded or seen, if it wouldnít have been exposed by the selection of the photographer. The same is valid for the Limousine of Wladimir Putin, which one also wouldnít have been able to be seen otherwise. Photography is the transformation of realityÝÝ and doesnít want to have accurate effigy anymore but a staging of a situation. For too long photography was wrongly seen to ?freeze? the present, to conserve the past with the demand to candour. It is the achievement of Roland Barthes to mark the specific time of the medium photography. Not the ?freezing? the moment is the objective of photography but the ?passing? of time. Time may stagnate, concentrate or be concentrated in the further work of the photographer. According to Roland Barthes the witness of photography does not aim towards the object, that should be shown impartial, not anymore the possibility of realistic display of that medium, but its time. The photography keeps tracks of a moment, separated from the time continuum in which it took place. Only the staging of the picture by the photographer gives the spectator the possibility to partake in the moment. In Ansgar M. van Treeck ís view photography of Wladimir Putin shows itself just as photo of a movie. A lot of pictures are reflected in the limousine out of which Putin, half-covered by a curtain, unfocused in his movements with secretive look openly looks out of the window. The scene proves itself as scene that is in suspension between hiding and showing, between moving on and staying, the relationship constellation between Clement and Putin and between the mass and the individual. The photo becomes the narrator, and puts the situation on stage turning it in a narration. Furthermore he uses the instruments of ?photography after the photo?, the media shift to the computer. With help of the computer the pictures turn into an image, that marks the situation. Photography, that understands itself as staging of a situation, doesnít require the authenticity of a document, but to be the authentic expression of the artistic composition in and at the medium of photography. Belonging to that the basic presentation of the photographic expression is with pigmented ink on canvas. This textile of the drapery corresponds with the curtain of Putinís car as well as on the sofa where Ansgar M. van Treeck places Marianne and Walter Dirks.

They sit closely together on a sofa in the style of the 50ís without having their eyes ever meet. Slanted to the front each of them focus on different imaginary points. In front of them there is a table with a tablecloth with a small cover under a flower vase with only one wild flower. In the back round there is a picture of the Swiss Alps: ?Top of Switzerland?. Next to that on the left there are a few books and above that on the left a tableau of Chagall. On the right side there is a frame with all the photos from which you want to protect from yourself and a cross above it with a bookshelf to the right of it. The accurate metaphorical language marks the situation with hyper realistic conspicuousness. The shown pair is interwoven with its situation, which is very clearly to be recognized as a historical situation. The photographer gave the couple not only its age with them but also his story through his art work. The time is engraved in the room, which the photo contains in a new medial room. It is successful in combining the inside and outside, the front and the back that over and over indicates that inner visual insight or outlook. In the photographic room Ansgar M. van Treeck stages the window to the world. In fact the images become windows to other pictures. Through a window in the door of the Villa Hammerschmitt one can see miscellaneous persons in gradually different distinctiveness and mysteriousness. The most distinct seams to be Michail Gorbatschow in the middle of the lower window frame, where he quickly fixes his tie and obviously gladly walks towards Richard von Weizs”cker, who already stretches his hand towards him. The shadow of a cameraman can also be recognized. He darkens the window above the scene. In the window to the left and the right of that window other people show themselves less definite. Through multiple extracts in the display window, the multiple frames in the frame manage to make moving and unmoving scenes meet and overlay interiors and exteriors. Over the manner of their meeting the viewerís direction decides. The situation of the photo puts itself in scene. It operates in the field of double entendre that already houses the ?present?. No one describes this double entendre better than G¸nther Anders, who alluded to the function of the ?present? in the media, merely denotes simultaneity in a common, prepared world moment for all spectators of newspaper images and television. At the same time it marks an understanding of precise present. With it he joins the "situation, in which people meet each other or the world, affecting each other?. The photographical view of Ansgar M. van Treeck targets a situation like this.

In the medium of photography one is able to preserve tracks of situation, tracks of the past. This media specific character of photography, to register light imprints, which Roland Barthes marked far too ontological and reference oriented, connects this art form at the same time yet with the act of recording. On this note the position on the theory has shifted. The process of the picture production seams to be rather constitutive. Circumstances, in which the image arose, the act of shooting the image and the setting become vital. The gesture in the look of a photographer on the ascertained Bundesadler is inseparable combined with it, when the Bundesadler lies on wood panels and is surrounded by sawdust, impresses more by its material strength than by its symbolic power. Ansgar M. van Treeck shows known regalia and chattels from the interior of the Bonner politicians under other circumstances totally unfamiliar, because it is uninhabited. Occasionally stored, stacked and packaged the mnemonic medium of photography steps between junk room and museum, to not exclude the memory of the in-between. A theatre of things of a special kind marked with their names or numbered and cloaked objects prove themselves as contra production in the setting of cultural memory formation. The photographerís gesture elevates a sofa, an impressive row of lampshades from the 60ís, a coat-rack covered by transparent tarpaulin, a plurality of items, that were removed from their surroundings, to ?Ready-mades? of the ?Bonner-Bundestags?.

The photographic traces do not only preserve what the chemistry and light make visual, but also situation specific moments, ?that tiny spark of coincidence, here and now? (Barthes), which allows looking back on this piece of German history in a different way. A view like this demands a staging that is also shown in the photo of a young soldier, which is staged in the same way as an image of a historical event: ?Last Hour?, the last hour of a perished regime. In interplay with its title the stamina of the soldier proves itself as a statue of caducity and the photo not only as a play with the photographic code. In fact the mute forcefulness of a denunciative, that exceeds every representative depiction code, stays in the teenage facial features. Staging turns out to be work on a statues appearance and its transgression.

A transgression shows itself over and over in a different

Surplus of a picture, in a mysterious remainder or in a surprising addition. This addition to the photographic deed, the push on the release, doesnít let itself be staged, sometimes however lets itself be provoked, e.g. by the unsuspected making of a photo appointment, of which the ?Stars? do not know, and rather get surprised. To the constitutive process of a production of these photos belongs the moment of realization, to be photographed. It is shown in the face of Helmut Kohl during the ?Kanzlerfest? very differently in the features than in those of John Cage.

In the photographically staged situation by Ansgar M. van Treeck the composer, who always searches for new ways to surprise his audience and himself, is surprised himself. Also the observer is surprised by the freeing and freed laughter of John Cage that he can even keeps in the most impossible situations. Here the ?Nestor of the New Music?, Zen-Philosopher, forming artist and poet appears rather immersed, shortly torn out, but still staying in the range between absences and presence. The situation doesnít seam determined, in fact more open and indefinite. Ansgar M. van Treeck obviously has not defined the situation. However in its uncertainty this situation is rather well-staged than badly, because this openness corresponds with the operation of the composer. By verbalizing complex composed questions, that he answered by random process, he freed his compositions from his own partialities and repugnance and at the same time from an iteration of the same, to which the artistís own taste easily ensnares. Thus the situations, which all too often are depicted too easy, should stay complex. To reach this complexity enhancement, John Cage inserted seminal innovations in the art. Since then concerts must not only be composed by tunes, silence and sounds are not contrasts anymore and can pervade ?art and life? multifaceted. John Cage consistently worked with the vacancy that usually is full with the silence that sometimes can be very loud.

The additional knowledge of the incident of the creation of this photo, the memory of the point of time of the photographic act during the rehearsals for the 2nd Acustica International of the WDR-K–ln in the New Yorker Whitney Museum 1990 changes the way of looking at the picture.Ý AnsgarÝ M. van Treeck caught a moment of silence between the lectures, the vacancy between the reserved seats of actors, a break in the specimen pieces to the realisation of the music piece. ?An Alphabet? by John Cage. Klaus Sch–ning attempted the staging of a scenic reading that was composed for the radio, about which John Cage himself said that ? three ghosts appear and they come in contact with things which are determined by random operation carried out with the alphabet.?

Spokesmen, among them John Cage or Alison Knowles (left in the picture) as well as a variety of famous and known artists, were sitting in orchestra formation, the text like music sheets in front of themselves, on stage orchestrating with their voices the particular text piece, with which the invisible ghosts for the imagination turned visible. The vacancy and silence, that surrounds John Cage in this photo, makes the invisible visible in a different way. What the photo does not show, is just as important as that, which is shown. Who knows how to capture the situation, is able to touch the visible at the same time with the more comprehensive.