Delmes
& Zander I Berlin presents
OBSESSION
Photo collages from the 19th century
September
16 – November 26, 2016
Opening:
Friday, 16.09., 6–9 pm
 |
Obsession,
ca.1870, collage, photography, mixed media, 29 x 24 cm. Courtesy Delmes & Zander.
|
In
the early 1990s, an album of approximately 50 double-page photo
collages was discovered in France. Based upon the photographic
techniques employed and from the fashion of clothes and hairstyles
depicted, the album most probably dates from around 1860 -1870. One
of the photographs shows the newspaper La Lyonnaise,
suggesting that the works may have originated in Lyon. The album has
been disassembled over the years and the works dispersed, some are
now included in various private and museum collections, including
that of the Musée d’Orsay. The author of the so-called
Obsession-album is unknown and remains anonymous up to the
present time. An excerpt of the album was published in 1993, together
with works by Hanne Darboven.
With
the development of photography on paper, the first manipulations of
photographic images occurred through the cutting of negatives and
through the effects resulting from double exposure and overexposure
(for example in spirit photography) as well as the technique of
collage. Since the end of the 1850s, various materials have been
combined with the photographic print (for instance cut paper, water
coloring, pieces of fabric or lace) and were the preference of upper
class Victorian ladies, often with playful and imaginative elements
as decorations in family and friendship albums.
Although
quite different in subject, examples of these common techniques can
also be found in the Obsession-album: photo collages of women
at the stake as well as before or after decapitation gave vent to
their author’s phantasies, barely concealing a deep-seated
sexualized undercurrent in the work. The album is clearly to be
understood as a private project. The technical virtuosity of the work
suggests the hand of a professional commercial photographer with
access to photographic equipment and a darkroom as well as contacts
with female models which he brought to bear in this unusual work
without them realizing precisely how their portraits would finally
appear. In this respect, the so-called Obsession-album is at
the same time unconventional and exceptional.
Individual
sheets of the album bring to mind tableaux vivants denoting
a clear influence of the theater in their composition. With
repetitive citations of artworks and classical poses they testify to
a manifest degree of artistic knowledge: depictions of martyrs and
decapitations in paintings may have served the author of these
collages as models in content and form like Paul Delaroche’s at the
time already famous paintings The Decapitation of Lady Jane Grey
(1833) or Herodias with the Head of John the Baptist (1843).
The
incident of the so-called “Murderer of Maids” may have inspired
the photographer’s imagination: Between 1855 and 1861, Martin
Dumollard had murdered numerous young women near Lyon with the
supposed assistance of his wife. At the time, the incident became a
media phenomenon inspiring the collective imagination of the public
far beyond the borders of France.
Press
contact:
Monika
Koencke
Koencke@delmes-zander.de
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