Lease artwork "Light & Shadow" by Reinhard Südmersen with an option to purchase

During my training as a lithographer, I was introduced to photography, among other things. I was captivated from the start by the leading figures in photographic art such as Nipce, Talbot and Daguerre. At first I wasn't aware of why I preferred the technically imperfect images from the early days of photography to the perfect images of our day. Today I know that it is precisely this imperfection that can inspire our imagination.

Shaking effects, blurring, over- or under-exposure, chromatic aberrations or even image noise are an absolute no-go in classic photography. However, I believe that all of these effects expand the photographic possibilities, allow the viewer to actively involve their imagination in the image and take artistic photography to a new level.

But what actually fascinates us about photography? Today we are able to take pictures at any time with our smartphones. We encounter the selfie craze everywhere.

I believe that we are driven to document our lives. We want to capture experiences so we can remember them later. But anyone who has ever looked through old vacation photos will realize that this only works to a limited extent. Because we absorb experiences with all our senses - we see, hear, smell
and taste. All of this influences our perception. However, a photo can only capture the visual impression and of course does not do justice to the immediate experience.

To preserve or find this immediacy of the moment, not to freeze the original life in its emotion, its movement and uniqueness , but rather to create a projection surface for it on which it can continue to have an effect and develop further in the eye of the viewer, is my artistic concern.

Just as we absorb a wealth of impressions at every moment and become one Processing experiences, I condense the diverse emotional impressions into new sensations in my photo collages by overlaying several individual shots.

Our memories consist of real experiences and emotional learning, but they are retrieved abstractly. I follow this insight with my image compositions. The feel of painting opens up the possibility of abstraction for me beyond traditional photography. Today, new technologies give us a fascinating wealth of design options.

The essence of art has always been to look for new forms of expression and so I find it wrong as a photographer to close oneself to the possibilities of modern image processing. So far, however, my work has mainly been limited to the digital overlay of several images in layers. That alone gives me enormous creative freedom and essentially corresponds to multiple exposures in analogue photography.

• Nationality: GERMANY
• Date of birth : 1957
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary German Artists