honorable mention
Juergen Naber germany
title
The line and the dot
Surreal Legacies in the Photographic Oeuvre of Jürgen Naber
Jürgen Naber’s photographic works show themselves to be inspired by strategies of the exposure of parts, of dismemberment and faceting which have their firm place in 20th-century avant-garde art. Naber’s partial views correspond to surrealist methods and techniques of decontextualisation. He not only inherits the surrealist delight in the artistic autonomy and exposure of individual facial areas which makes his views look alien and improbable to us. With his chosen edits, the photographer distances himself from disambiguating and homogenizing conceptions of the face, and approaches notions of the face as an entity or a structure whose wholly different geometric expansions and elevations has been possibly put together by chance, without any internal logic. “Compositions” is Naber’s name for the image details, which loosen the face-parts precisely from their “mutual dependence” which is crucial to the face’s impact and owe their surreal, dynamic momentum to the attributes light, perspective and macroscopy.
Naber’s method, which cancels any claim to similarity to the portrayed face, defies interpretation of human physiognomy. As his image details abolish the impression of individual particularities, the usual interpretations of transience and age that are associated in them with liver-spots, wrinkles and skin irritations are also bypassed. Instead, the image details accentuate the “event value” of the surface structure as a layer full of openings, nuances and depressions, craters and niches which reveals an incredibly sensuous component.
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entry description
The Line and the Dot.Surreal Legacies in the Photographic Oeuvre of Jürgen Naber
Jürgen Naber’s photographic works show themselves to be inspired by strategies of the exposure of parts, of dismemberment and faceting which have their firm place in 20th-century avant-garde art. Naber’s partial views correspond to surrealist methods and techniques of decontextualisation. He not only inherits the surrealist delight in the artistic autonomy and exposure of individual facial areas which makes his views look alien and improbable to us. With his chosen edits, the photographer distances himself from disambiguating and homogenizing conceptions of the face, and approaches notions of the face as an entity or a structure whose wholly different geometric expansions and elevations has been possibly put together by chance, without any internal logic. “Compositions” is Naber’s name for the image details, which loosen the face-parts precisely from their “mutual dependence” which is crucial to the face’s impact and owe their surreal, dynamic momentum to the attributes light, perspective and macroscopy.
Naber’s method, which cancels any claim to similarity to the portrayed face, defies interpretation of human physiognomy. As his image details abolish the impression of individual particularities, the usual interpretations of transience and age that are associated in them with liver-spots, wrinkles and skin irritations are also bypassed. Instead, the image details accentuate the “event value” of the surface structure as a layer full of openings, nuances and depressions, craters and niches which reveals an incredibly sensuous component.
about the photographer
Jürgen Naber has been working as a photographer in Cologne since 2003. He does both commercial and artistic photography; in commercial photography, his focuses lie in people, industry, and reportage photography. Frequently, however, he also photographs authors and actors. His clients Germany-wide include many production companies, publishers, and other companies from the media sector. He has been working closely with many Cologne-based advertising agencies for many years, and takes photographs on their behalf across Europe. Jürgen Naber also co-operates, among others, with the image service provider Corbis. His artistic works have been shown in both the national and international context. His positions are always reflections on his immediate surroundings, and demonstrate his versatile and precise sense of perception and his ability to find an appropriate form, every time, for what he perceives. In 2012 Jürgen Naber spent 9 months living in Ålesund / Norway. There, he deepened his artistic ambitions, and in this connection is currently producing a number of photo books. At present, Jürgen Naber is living, working, and photographing again in Cologne.back to gallery