Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible.

Project Proposal_Philipp Gengenbach

When I was looking into the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher I came across the quotation of the famous painter Paul Klee: „Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible“.

Photography is an art, so it could also be called: „Photography does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible“.

I think this sentence describes the photographs of the Bechers in really good way. But it applies not only to the photographs of the Bechers. Also a lot of other photographs we were looking at in this course are characterized by the documentation of daily things which happen in our life. We are completely used to it and only because of the photographic documentation we begin to think about it and maybe we recognize the specialty of these things. 

I was really impressed by this statement of Paul Klee and it was helpful for a better understanding of a lot of photographs we looked at in this course. I started to look at some photographs in another kind of way.

The art of photographing not only the very special things but rather the things whose specialty you could first recognize at second glance is very interesting.

My Project Proposal should be to analyze some photographs related to this statement of Paul Klee.
I would like to pick some photographs of the photographers we were talking about but also I will try to take some photos by myself which show daily stories in the human habitat.