Hans-Christian Schink | 1h

1h - One hour is the duration of Hans-Christian Schink's gaze towards the sun, and the name of its pictorial representation through photography. He uses overexposures, called solarisations, which are only possible through analogue methods.

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The individual image titles give the coordinates of each work's creation: date, time, latitude and longitude.

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The sun is rarely considered as a physical element. Its constant presence as a star is largely ignored by our consciousness. Human optical perception registers degrees of brightness and uses contrasts for orientation.

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Hans-Christian Schink unites all of this in his photographic reflections. His representations show a contradictory situation: the depicted landscape appears static while the sun conveys movement. By distorting the physical phenomena, the images take on surreal traits, embedded in a setting devoid of human life.

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The work has further paradoxes to offer: despite being a contemporary document, it takes the viewer back to the analogue principles of photography. The reduction to a pure contrast of light vs. dark recalls the long-ago beginnings of photography. But there are also parallels with the tradition of film. The sun has been separated from its original form and becomes almost unidentifiable as a rod-like, flying object. Reminiscent of a fluorescent tube, it hovers menacingly above the landscape, clearly evoking the science fiction genre.

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Text : A. Meyer / Clervaux - cité de l'image, English translation by Nadia Linden

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Outdoor

www.hc-schink.de

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