Barbara Wien

Elisabeth Neudörfl

10 Dec 2010 - 10 Feb 2011

© Elisabeth Neudörfl
aus der Serie Habitat, 2010
1 von 72 Originalphotographien (à 50x39,5 cm)
ELISABETH NEUDÖRFL
Habitat
December 10, 2010 – February 10, 2011

The photoseries Habitat was developed by Elisabeth Neudörfl (* 1968, lives and works in Berlin and Essen) as a part of the project Ruhr Views 2010. For this project Thomas Weski invited eleven photographers: Hilla Becher, Laurenz Berges, Joachim Brohm, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Andreas Gursky, Jitka Hanzlová, Candida Höfer, Matthias Koch, Elisabeth Neudörfl, Jörg Sasse und Thomas Struth. The artists reflected the perception of social reality in the region Ruhr.

Thomas Weski in the catalogue Ruhr Views: „In her work as an artist, Elisabeth Neudörfl produces extensive photographic documentations of urban space and the transition zones between city and countryside. She has used this approach in various projects in Germany and Asia. Neudörfl analyzes urban structures as prerequisite for social behavior and thus combines an artistic perspective with social analysis. The artist has employed a wide variety of forms of presentation and publication for her direct, comprehensible, and documentary photography. She arranges her black-and-white or color photographs into sequences, thus reflecting on the limits and features of the medium employed.
For her contribution to Ruhr Views, Habitat, Neudörfl arranged seventy-two black-and-white photographs in two stacked horizontal rows to create a frieze in which individual photographs are assembled in groups. The images, arranged from left to right, generally show different views of the motifs in question and thus make it possible to follow the artist's method: the attempt to follow up and the admission that there is not just one valid view. The use of flash when photographing by daylight often immerses the foreground of the photograph in harsh light. This technique gives black-and-white photographs a somewhat artificial effect, making them look like photographs of crime scenes and yet at the same time, in combination with other views of the same motif, it liberates them from the unambiguously documentary. Although very much conceived as individual photographs, in their arrangement they present a report, from an ever-changing perspective, on peripheral urban areas and the architecture employed there, in a dialectic interplay with existing and developing nature. At the point of intersection of this transition, the work's title refers both to the significance of this zone as a place where both animals and people live – though they are not respresented in the photographs – and to possible shifts in the seemingly balanced relationship between them.“

Habitat 2010, series of 72 photographs, silver gelatine (on fibre based paper, hand proof), 50 x 39,5 cm
edition of 3 (+ 2 a.p.)


Next to the series Habitat we show the unique books burn, warehouse, burn (1993), venceremos (1994), der Stadt (1998) and we celebrate the new artists’ book:

Elisabeth Neudörfl E.D.S.A.
286 pages, 212 colour photographs (of Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (E.D.S.A.) Manila, Philippines),
28,5x22, hardcover, edition of 300 signed copies, Wiens Verlag, Berlin 2010, 68 Euro

With E.D.S.A. a complete photographic project by Neudörfl is published. It shows a series of 116 different views of the street Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Manila. This street was the staging ground of the demonstrations against the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and is considered as a symbol for the rebellion against dictatorship. At intervals of seconds Neudörfl took photographs alongside this famous avenue. They assemble to a panorama with leaps in time. She maintains the viewpoint as observer and photographs from different angles. The book seems to be a perfect place for the documentary photographic style and the series of Neudörfl.

Elisabeth Neudörfl (* 1968)
since 2009 professor for documentary photography, Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen
 

Tags: Laurenz Berges, Joachim Brohm, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Andreas Gursky, Jitka Hanzlová, Candida Höfer, Elisabeth Neudörfl, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth, Thomas Weski, Thomas Weski