FEATURE: Adrian Sauer
Light Star Dark Shadow © Adrian Sauer
Written by Federica Barrios Carbonell
Photo Edited by Lucia Luzzani and Yanting Chen
Adrian Sauer embodies modernity through his photography. The talented German photographer, who received the SPECTRUM International Prize for Photography of 2023, creates works that seem to narrate the history of photography itself, showing us how advances in technology have changed that creative medium. Viewers of Sauer’s work can see the march of technological advance in the process of image production, and how these changes affect the ways photography, as a medium, represents reality.
Installation of A-Z (Brockhaus) © Adrian Sauer
A-Z (Brockhaus) © Adrian Sauer
Sauer’s images touch on the idea of synchronicity through a modern lens of culture and create a fine line between hyperrealism and simultaneity. His images deconstruct photography and its representational properties, conceptualizing photography as a construction of reality. The history of photography has been one of technological advance that has altered technical processes and people’s perceptions of it. His work narrates the outcomes of the mass digitization of photography, the technical process of image production, and how these changes affect the ways the medium represents reality. Sauer recalls photography’s technological progression, bringing the viewer’s attention to the relationship of the medium’s past and present. The finer points of the technology that enable photography are being lost.
Dark Star Light Shadow © Adrian Sauer
Photography is so commonplace it is taken for granted. In Light Star Dark Shadow and Dark Star Light Shadow, Sauer wants to show us that the technology enabling photography is beautiful, to be cherished: hands hold an early digital camera with all the care they would cradle a fragile antique. These two pieces create futuristic representations of something as basic as the shadow, revealing that shadows can create illusions within images, and how vivid the relationship truly is between color, its shadows and highlights, and our unthinking vision.
Form und Farbe © Adrian Sauer
Another selection, Form und Farbe, shows us a beautiful set of images of cloudy skies. The clouds, as the subject, are somehow dreamlike due to depths of color. Golden sunlight streams through deep blue and cyan skies. The clouds absorb the warmth of the light and harmonize yet contrast with other elements. The photographs are reminiscent of more classical art, giving the illusion of gazing at a Baroque ceiling, an art form that was hyperreal and beautiful yet not a capturing of anything real. However, the real clouds that are the subject and emphasis of Sauer’s Form und Farbe highlights photography’s technical and visual power to capture reality.
Gradient © Adrian Sauer
Gradient is also a representation of the technologies behind the photography process that puts into perspective little known aspects of photographic methods. Here Sauer uses light exposure to create a colorful gradient panel which draws connections between the human eye’s physiology, the mechanics of the camera, and aspects of what it takes to capture a photographic image. This mechanical representation of photography makes color the emphasis of the image. As the subject, color’s role in human perception of images comes to the fore. Sauer creates new dimensions with his camera, his use of space, and conceptualization of the photographic medium to create a sense of subjectivity within the audience.
LEICA M9-P »Edition Hermès« © Adrian Sauer
