B&W ART ZONE










Infrared light is invisible to the naked eye. Wolfgang Wiesen creates pictures of great graphic and aesthetic value using this technique. He draws his subjects from the world around us and isolates them from their surroundings in highly structured compositions.

In favour of achieving a precise form, he refrains from reproducing the exact details in his work. However, it is not Wolfgang Wiesen's subject alone that produces the effect of the image, but more so his photographic creative ability. He sensitively tunes the viewpoint of his camera with the focal length of his preferred super wide angle lens, so that the photos emerge without distracting details in admirable lucidity.

During five years committed to the analysis of his subject, various teaming and maturing processes have been employed, and as the end-result, externally impressive pictures have emerged, and introspectively his skill, points of view, and insight have profited. Therefore the mastery of the techrucal process of infrared photography is not only the method for the shaping of his creations, but also the means whereby he can realise his thoughts and feelings.

The use of infrared light to see the world does not correspond to the way we see things every day: The pitch-black sky above the landscape, the effective radiation from the vegetation, the amazing ability to penetrate the atmosphere - and everything optically presented in vibrant grain. This is an unfamiliar reality far away from normal perception, pictures from a dreamworld. With an obvious instinct for this shift in reality, Wolfgang Wiesen likes to choose deserted and decrepit castles and manor houses, which he transforms into projection rooms for our fantasy and into fairytale castles.

Wolfgang Wiesen uses infrared film with a masterly hand as a photographic means to transform reality, to take away the comprehensible materiality and thereby to open a door in our imagination leading to a world of poetry and dreams, a corner of our minds often closed off these days.

Rather different impressions are represented in the landscape pictures. The trees, bushes and grasses, in which the rays of sunlight are caught by chlorophyll and which are put to use as the vital energy - the pivot around which animal and human existence moves - become spheres of radiating light in Wolfgang Wiesen's pictures.

The photographer who studied biology because he wanted to observe the processes of life, here presents one of life's secrets in glaring brightness.

He displays this mysterious connection betweeen light and life in his pictures in an unusual form for us to marvel at. The way that these landscape photographs fascinate the beholder is founded on the intuitive knowledge of the artist of the life-giving association between light and life.

Wolfgang Wiesen understands and deals with this in the same way as Hermann Hesse: It is part of the nature of art to bring reality to a higher form of expression and to disclose the secret sense of nature, which is important for humanity to find.

Norbert Weber











MORE NEXT ARTIST ARCHIVE PREVIOUS BACK ARTIST



Copyright © 1997 Black & White Art Zone. All Rights Reserved.