 Capri, 2003 c-print 31.5" x 55" (80 x 140 cm) Florio Puenter Species of Spaces We are pleased to present the first solo show at Esso Gallery by the Swiss photographer Florio Puenter, entitled "Species of Spaces". The exhibit will feature a four panel panoramic view of the mountains that surround the upper Engadine region of the Swiss Alps and a second landscape, a detail of the southern tip of the small Italian island of Capri. Florio Puenter during his frequent trips around the world of images, found vintage photographs of these places and returned to photograph the same location from the same vantage point. His remakes are missing something, as you will notice. There is no sign of human presence. In the first picture, St. Moritz and Sils are not in their places and the old monastery with the town of Capri have vanished or maybe were never there. Next to the two landscapes, are a series of photographic "portraits" of ancient war helmets. We call them portraits as those helmets were once "inhabited" by someone's head and they are still powerfully carrying their memories. All of the images shown here are black and white and they portray things and places that come from another time, another space, before Niépce and Fox-Talbot, even before the invention of photography and maybe also before Gutenberg. What interested us immediately about Florio Puenter's work is how it reviews the history of photography (in substance the history of the images) discovering things that challenge the view of the photo as a revolutionary device, and because it deals with a substantial contradiction inside the medium and its codes. Photography is apparently revolutionary, potentially revolutionary (according to Benjamin) because of its possibility of multiplication, of reproducing itself; and yet, in substance, it is reactionary, an official supporter of the conditioning culture of the academy. We believe, however, that a certain contradiction and even misunderstanding has developed in regard to photography. The contradiction concerns the entire history of photography, which is generally viewed as the history of realism, of the depiction of reality. This attitude obviously regurgitates old ideas, old academic models, and has produced new ways of staging realism; however it also involves an evasion of the history of photography in its various aspects and functions. The misunderstanding concerns the relationship between a technological assumption and an artistic one - or rather, between several codes and their users. Florio Puenter's photographic language exists outside of the official vocabulary of the camera, it doesn't follow the common grammar, because it consciously uses a system of codes that is different from the system proposed by the contemporary culture and civilization of the image. His work doesn't deal with histories of realistic shooting as opposed to histories of non-realistic shooting, but with verbal conventions that obviously are analyzed case by case. The two bodies of work that we are presenting in this exhibition have many levels of reading, and many realisms rather then a single one, and they demonstrate that realism in photography is a question of relationship, not an absolute system. December 2, 2003 - January 10, 2004 Hours: Tue-Sat 11am - 6pm or by appointment esso gallery 531 West 26th Street USA-New York, NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 560 9728 Fax +1 212 560 9729 E-Mail essogallery@earthlink.net www.essogallery.com |
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