THE BEAUTY OF SLOWING DOWN
A collector friend of mine once told me that to truly understand a photograph, you need thirty minutes and a magnifying glass. At first, this was annoying to hear. By nature, I am biologically impatient. I love art, yet I used to pride myself on making it through the Louvre in a single afternoon.
Working with Holger, I am beginning to understand what my friend meant about the beauty of slowing down and carefully unpacking all that a photograph can hold. When confronted with his images, I feel as if I am falling into an unfamiliar and exciting way of viewing the world. His work stops me in my tracks and beckons my attention—to the subjects, the composition, and even the tangible presence of a photograph within an artist book.
To introduce myself, my name is Ysidra Paczkowski, and I am collaborating with Holger to define the interlapping narratives behind his work. I love images, and before this, had worked as a Photography Conservation Technician and even designed an exhibition on twentieth-century photography as a Curatorial Assistant at The Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Working one-on-one with a single artist for an extended time has sharpened my power of observation and strengthened my writing skills. I have learned to approach one artist’s practice from multiple perspectives, teasing out the ways a work can connect to a painting, a mood, or the everyday rhythms of my own life. I have gained an appreciation for the artistic potential in wedding photography and for the topographical hierarchies hidden in family portraits. I find myself walking the streets as Holger does with his WALK series, instinctively taking imaginary snapshots of unexpected moments.
This collection of observations is both a love letter to photography and an exercise in thinking about photography beyond the vernacular constraints we often impose on the medium.
A collector friend of mine once told me that to truly understand a photograph, you need thirty minutes and a magnifying glass. At first, this was annoying to hear. By nature, I am biologically impatient. I love art, yet I used to pride myself on making it through the Louvre in a single afternoon.
Working with Holger, I am beginning to understand what my friend meant about the beauty of slowing down and carefully unpacking all that a photograph can hold. When confronted with his images, I feel as if I am falling into an unfamiliar and exciting way of viewing the world. His work stops me in my tracks and beckons my attention—to the subjects, the composition, and even the tangible presence of a photograph within an artist book.
To introduce myself, my name is Ysidra Paczkowski, and I am collaborating with Holger to define the interlapping narratives behind his work. I love images, and before this, had worked as a Photography Conservation Technician and even designed an exhibition on twentieth-century photography as a Curatorial Assistant at The Contemporary Jewish Museum.
Working one-on-one with a single artist for an extended time has sharpened my power of observation and strengthened my writing skills. I have learned to approach one artist’s practice from multiple perspectives, teasing out the ways a work can connect to a painting, a mood, or the everyday rhythms of my own life. I have gained an appreciation for the artistic potential in wedding photography and for the topographical hierarchies hidden in family portraits. I find myself walking the streets as Holger does with his WALK series, instinctively taking imaginary snapshots of unexpected moments.
This collection of observations is both a love letter to photography and an exercise in thinking about photography beyond the vernacular constraints we often impose on the medium.
THE BATHERS
001
Edie P.
PROGENY
As a child, I used to go to the creek in my hometown to splash around with my friends. Oftentimes, I would wear one of my Dad’s oversized shirts over cotton briefs, an echo of the spontaneous moment in which I decided to take off my clothes and jump into the water. There is even a photo somewhere of me and friends pushing a makeshift boat along the creek, each of us in various stages of undress. We felt entirely at ease, indulging in the innocent sense of security unique to childhood.
This memory came to me when viewing Holger’s panorama of his family on the river Rhine. Children in striped boyshorts wade through the water, sometimes appearing multiple times in the same frame. They move on a kind of pilgrimage to and from the boat where the adults reside—their repeated selves tracing the stages of approach, arrival, departure, and return. I saw myself in the girl in white underwear and remembered how liberating it felt to be that comfortable, that edenic, in my skin.
This memory came to me when viewing Holger’s panorama of his family on the river Rhine. Children in striped boyshorts wade through the water, sometimes appearing multiple times in the same frame. They move on a kind of pilgrimage to and from the boat where the adults reside—their repeated selves tracing the stages of approach, arrival, departure, and return. I saw myself in the girl in white underwear and remembered how liberating it felt to be that comfortable, that edenic, in my skin.
THE BATHERS
001
Edie P.
PROGENY
As a child, I used to go to the creek in my hometown to splash around with my friends. Oftentimes, I would wear one of my Dad’s oversized shirts over cotton briefs, an echo of the spontaneous moment in which I decided to take off my clothes and jump into the water. There is even a photo somewhere of me and friends pushing a makeshift boat along the creek, each of us in various stages of undress. We felt entirely at ease, indulging in the innocent sense of security unique to childhood.
This memory came to me when viewing Holger’s panorama of his family on the river Rhine. Children in striped boyshorts wade through the water, sometimes appearing multiple times in the same frame. They move on a kind of pilgrimage to and from the boat where the adults reside—their repeated selves tracing the stages of approach, arrival, departure, and return. I saw myself in the girl in white underwear and remembered how liberating it felt to be that comfortable, that edenic, in my skin.
This memory came to me when viewing Holger’s panorama of his family on the river Rhine. Children in striped boyshorts wade through the water, sometimes appearing multiple times in the same frame. They move on a kind of pilgrimage to and from the boat where the adults reside—their repeated selves tracing the stages of approach, arrival, departure, and return. I saw myself in the girl in white underwear and remembered how liberating it felt to be that comfortable, that edenic, in my skin.