2003/2005
In order situate this work in the context of portrait photography and artistic studies, the artists presented the video Lido, Biennale Venezia 2003 at an exhibition on the theme of portrait photography and August Sander at the Gallery of the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig in 2005. Among other things, it deals with an important common thematic field that is shared by these two artists and teachers: the question of gesture, or here: the gestures by which photography is produced.
A group of modern young people lounges around on a somewhat ramshackle pier that sticks out into the ocean, enjoying the romantic mood. They have various cameras with which they photograph one another, self-confident, hedonistic: they celebrate the photographic act, as though in an art performance. They walk, stand, pose, peer through their cameras, focus them, click the releases. They are constantly in motion, their activities repeat themselves in variations and coalesce with the beauty of the moment.
The somewhat wobbly telephoto images, taken with hand-held camera, thematize the artist as a spontaneous and initially concealed observer of the situation. The moment of recollection is mixed into these observations: youth, beauty, photography, the body, all held together in the fragile moment of the fading light. Alba D'Urbano continually films and splices into the flow of images a close-up portrait fragment of Tina Bara, which gazes reflexively at the situation as well as into herself. The location evokes Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. In addition, the subtitle - which runs along the lower edge of the image like a news crawl - indicates that the 2003 Venice Biennale is currently taking place. The young people on the sea have seen all of the art and are exhausted. They do not realize that both filmmakers are actually teachers of media and photography. In the end, the young people are asked whether they study photography. Yes, they reply, in Düsseldorf.
Presentation: DVD, monitor on base, ca. 10 min.