Nr. 9 nicht fixiert

Agfa Baryt 111 photo paper, 60 x 50 cm, developed, watered, not fixed, mounted on 80 x 60 cm museum board with hot glue foil. Titled and signed with pencil (front and back side). 80 x 60 cm aluminum glass frame, 80 x 60 cm black Molton cloth to cover image, clamped on the upper edge. Photo: Ulrich Tillmann. Subject: Dodo Jin Ming, Hong Kong 1993.

Germany 1999

Nr. 10 nicht fixiert

Agfa Baryt 111 photo paper, 60 x 50 cm, developed, watered, not fixed, mounted on 80 x 60 cm museum board with hot glue foil. Titled and signed with pencil (front and back side). 80 x 60 cm aluminum glass frame, 80 x 60 cm black Molton cloth to cover image, clamped on the upper edge. Photo: Ulrich Tillmann. Subject: Dodo Jin Ming, Hong Kong 1993.

Germany 1999

The photographs Nr. 9 nicht fixiert and Nr. 10 nicht fixiert are presented with a black cloth covering, which is lifted up by visitors when viewing. In this way, a museum situation is simulated and ironized: In traditional museums sensitive original drawings or prints are sometimes protected from light with covers to prevent colors from bleaching or the paper from yellowing. The viewer must actively remove the cover in order to look at the object of desire. This classical form of conservation in an exhibition context has increasingly appeared in connection with photos from the 19^th century. The photographic layer should be protected from changes caused by light, since images that came into being through light can also be destroyed by it.

For Tillmann these works were about creating a tangible experience of how light influences the photographic layer. A developed positive image was processed further in darkness into an exhibition photograph without fixer and then presented without a protective cover. Upon lifting the veil the visitor discovers that the photo is not fixed, while observing how the image turns darker and darker. How do the viewers react? Do they protect the image from vanishing by quickly closing the curtain, or do they watch with interest the small film of transformation, thereby accepting the destruction of the image?

The transformation of the image into a black surface is not a linear process (surely affected by the rinse water as well). Upon the first rays of light a slow darkening becomes perceptible and comprehensible; however, the process decelerates drastically later on, never reaching a complete black.

Ulrich Tillmann, born 1951 in Linnich, Germany, lives and works in Cologne.