Georg Parthen

Landschaften

My work deals with the concept of photography as a documentary medium. Since studying documentary photography I have been fascinated by the complex ideas and implications of photographic documentation. What are the visual and contextual qualities of a photograph that make us feel as if we were looking at an extract of reality? Is there a visual language of documentation?

Within the Landschaften series I try to incorporate and transcend these concepts. The places shown on my images only relate to the real world up to a certain extent but at the same time seem plausible. While for other projects I use image editing techniques to enhance and perfect my results, for the Landschaften they are a crucial part of the creative process. Through retouchting, digital lighting and montage I create interpretations of beautiful yet disturbing landscapes that range from slightly altered photographs to collages from different images. It is important that viewers cannot point their finger on the manipulations but at the same time feel arising doubts whether the world shown on my images can be trusted. What is a photograph of a place that does not exist?

Georg Parthen is an artist based in Berlin and Düsseldorf. He runs the non-commercial exhibition spaces Galerie Mikro in Düsseldorf and – together with Nicolas Wollnik – Minken & Palme in Berlin, which will open its first show in the fall of 2009. Georg´s images have been shown in numerous exhibitions internationally, most recently as part of the F/Stop festival in Leipzig, Germany and during Photo Espana, Madrid. He is a 2008 West Collection Aquisition Price winner, as part of which his work was shown during NEXT, Chicago. In the fall of 2007 Georg was a Hey Hot Shot winner by Jen Bekman Gallery, New York City. In 2006 Georg´s work was featured in the monograph “Regie der Relation“ by art historian and curator Andreas Kreul and was later shown in a solo exhibition at the Bremen Kunsthalle. In the same year Georg and the other students of Jörg Sasse´s photo class were awarded with the “Best class“ award of the Epson Art Photo Award during Art Cologne. Georg received his diploma with distinction from the University / Folkwang-School in 2007 where he studied documentary photography.