Latente Bilder
Bastian Schwind
Exposed 4 x 5 inch negatives, wrapped in a light impermeable foil, framed behind glass, 53 cm x 43 cm
Austria 2016–present
Image above: Bastian Schwind, Bauminsel an einem frühen Sommerabend im Burgenland (Bauminsel in Burgenland on an Early Summer Evening), horizontal format, 2016
In his photographic series Latente Bilder Bastian Schwind identifies and subverts the conventions of photographic vision. The exposed negatives are wrapped in a light impermeable foil. The seemingly “blank” images are shown in a latent stage in which pictorial information is captured without being disclosed. The artist plays with the certainty that an image exists outside conventional frames of perception and information exchange. The works become a purely subjective form of interpretation in which titles guide imagination and associations to visualize the latent scenery. The images thereby transcend their inevitable function as a document and become part of a mutually constitutive dialogue with the beholder. This might highlight, in general, the individual reality that persists in the automated and objective medium of photography.
By reducing content and form to the conceptual idea of visual information, the artworks confront the perceptive habits and normative frames of interpretation. The works thereby challenge the boundaries of our concept of what defines pictorial information exchange and photography as such. (Victoria Reuss)
Bastian Schwind, born 1987 in Zittau, Germany, lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
More images
1. Bastian Schwind, Langzeitbelichtung zweier Personen beim herstellen von Prints in einer Dunkelkammer. Atelier Erlachgasse 128 (Long-Exposure Photograph of Two Persons Making Prints in a Darkroom, Atelier Erlachgasse 128), vertical format, 2017
2. Bastian Schwind, Eine Junge Frau im Bademantel auf einen Sessel der späten 80er-Jahre sitzend (A Young Woman in a Bathrobe Sitting on a Chair from the Late 80s), vertical format, 2016
3. Bastian Schwind, Portrait meiner Mutter kurz nach Ihrem 60. Geburtstag, auf dem Parkplatz vor dem Hamburger Flughafen (A Portrait of My Mother Shortly After Her 60s Birthday, on a Parking Lot in Front of the Hamburg Airport), vertical format, 2017
4. Bastian Schwind, 36 Schnappschüsse der Wiener Innenstadt aus dem D-Wagen Richtung Nussdorf (36 Snapshots of Downtown Vienna taken from the Line D Tram to Nussdorf), horizontal format, 2017