Images and Text By Hermann Präg

The non-presentability

In the past, I explored light sculptures and light installations. In doing so, photography was a sideline, but it has since become very dominant. In the photographs, darkness – that which is black – was added to the light. Both remind me of a primal state. We would probably arrive at the true origin if the two annihilated each other. Perhaps origin is the wrong word. I’m rather thinking of a vacuum, a free, empty field where fluctuations can take place. It is the emergence and disappearance of premonitions. A vacuum is not simply nothingness. It creates an attraction.

Attraction is that which holds the world together. It is a fundamental element of matter. I can also feel attracted to a person. Sometimes I don’t know why. It rather is the mystery in the other that attracts me. Isn’t there a secret in each of us? The secret makes us permeable and sensitive.

Of course, I am not able to immerse myself entirely in a vacuum with photography. Perhaps the Zen master is able to. I try to reach a pre-speech realm. By that I mean that in the images there are few or no objects that can be named. The images thrive on deprivation. “That which divest can affect people even more profoundly and claim them more than anything present that strikes and affects them” (Heidegger, 1954, p. 5), the philosopher Martin Heidegger writes.

I frequently walk through the streets of a city with my camera. It often takes days before something catches my eye. It is an abstract structure that appeals to me. I cannot say what the reason is. The point of attraction remains undefined. Then, many images are created that lead to a dialogue. If I were to paint a picture, it would be an interpretation of the object. With the camera, it rather seems like a dialogue. It is clear to me that it is not the motif itself that invites dialogue. It is the cutout of an object that becomes an abstract structure. Its fragmentary nature deprives it of any possible interpretation. It becomes an opening that allows us to pass through. The philosopher and media scientist Ralf Beuthan (2006, p. 101) speaks of a “deprivation structure” as an exterior that cannot be translated into an interior. He goes on to speak of pure seeing, of “thinking seeing” that has become clairvoyant through “unbearable emptiness” and of “seeing the unthinkable”.

In my pictures, I create a vacuum in different ways. It can be glaring light or a black background, the beginning and end of a process of temporary emergence of forms. A contradictory contrast of forms or the strangeness of a representation can keep something unspeakable in a limbo. Horizons and boundaries that are meant to lure us to cross over to the ‘completely different,’ the inexpressible. There can be transparencies that free the gaze to the emptiness. Structures serve as a visual guidance system that leads to a void, which can also be viewed as fullness.

I often draw inspiration from cinema. Expressionist filmmakers such as Fritz Lang, Paul Wegener and Friedrich Murnau have had a major influence on me. They create dramatic contrasts between light and darkness. Filmmaker David Lynch transcends the boundaries of reality. The non-presentability becomes an essential element of his films. Terrence Malick explores the limits of human understanding. He deals with the more profound questions of existence and the dangers of human civilization.

Particularly in view of the crises of modernity, Jean-François Lyotard attaches the utmost importance to the question of non-presentability in 1985. For him, the ‘question of the non-presentability is the only one that is worth thinking and living for in the coming century’ (Lyotard, 1985, p. 99).

We must permeate reality more deeply with a new way of thinking. We do not have much time left.

All images and text © Hermann Präg

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