Shotimages
Walter Ebenhofer
A series of images created by shooting at new, sealed packages of photographic paper or slide film
Austria, Italy, Poland 1994–2012
A professional shooter, hunter, or marksman fires several shots according to my guidelines at a typically new and therefore well-sealed package of photobase paper or large-scale slides, whose brand and packaging I normally cite precisely in the title. The damaged photosensitive material is exposed to light through the shot holes, often over the course of several days, sometimes only for a few hours up to the point of developing. The intruding light accumulates and is saved on the photosensitive layers. The result: Despite the long exposure time, the light only succeeds in part to spread between the sheets of paper. A wide range of exposure actions are at work: direct exposure, indirect exposure through reflection, and partial exposure through transmitted light. The surface properties, the material is part of the recording. In essence, the photosensitive material “photographs” itself. Dust accumulated in the shooting process is registered photogrammatically. The work refers to the difference between incident and image and thus also to reality. A trace has been left in a dual manner.
Lately, I have been capturing the action by means of a simple documentary. Such performances took place most recently in Italy and Poland in 2007. (Walter Ebenhofer)
Walter Ebenhofer, born 1952 in Ernsthofen, Austria, lives and works in Steyr, Austria.
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References
Carl Aigner, Die Kunst der Jagd (Weitra: Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz, 2008).
Carl Aigner, “Im Lichte des Zufalls – Geschwindigkeit als ästhetische Konstruktion,” Eikon. International Magazine for Photography and Media Art, no. 29 (1999), pp. 70–73.
Tim Otto Roth, Körper. Projektion. Bild, Eine Kulturgeschichte der Schattenbilder (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2015), p. 397.
Brigitte Pamperl, Gesellschaft Bildender Künstler Österreichs, Künstlerhaus (eds.), Zeitraumzeit: Künstlerhaus Wien (Vienna: Folio Verlag, 2008), pp. 80–81.
Timm Starl, Kritik der Fotografie (Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2012), p. 287.