06.09. - 12.11.2002
Marjaana Kella
*1961
Orimattila - FIN
>
Reversed Portraits
>
When something is not there, possibilities open
> A
Dialogue
>
Marjaana Kella - Reversed | Hypnosis
>
Biography
>
PRESS
Zum Saisonstart (06. - 08.09.) der Frankfurter Galerien zeigen wir eine der bekanntesten finnischen Fotografinnen: Marjaana Kella.
Die Serie
„Reversed Portraits“ (1997) wurde vor kurzem in Nederlands Foto Instituut
und im BildMuseet in Umeå (S) gezeigt und sorgte für großes Aufsehen.
Marjaana Kella beschäftigt sich in ihren letzten Projekten mit dem Thema Portrait. So entstanden zwei Serien: „Reversed Portraits“ (Galerie Poller) und „People in Hypnosis“ (ab dem 12.09. im Centre Photographique d'Île de France - CPIF, Paris zu sehen).
In „Reversed Portraits" fotografiert Kella menschliche Hinterköpfe. Man sieht die Haare, den Nacken und ein wenig von der Kleidung der Porträtierten. „Portraits von hinten waren für mich wie eine fixe Idee. Ich wollte untersuchen was geschieht, wenn der Augenkontakt oder die Gesichtszüge nicht direkt sichtbar sind. Gleichzeitig wollte ich alle nur möglichen Details zeigen, die auf diese Weise noch sichtbar gemacht werden können. Eine Person, die man von hinten abbildet, macht den Eindruck der Verletzbarkeit, wie wir sie eher von Tieren kennen“. (Marjaana Kella)
Die traditionelle Portraitfotografie hat die Aufgabe, die äußerliche
Erscheinung einer Person, in der das Gesicht eine zentrale Rolle spielt,
wiederzugeben. Darüber hinaus soll sie auch das Wesen der fotografierten
Person zeigen. Diese beiden wesentlichen Merkmale werden in den Arbeiten von
Marjaana Kella mit einer Intensität hinterfragt, die beispiellos ist.
Die
Aufmerksamkeit des Betrachters wird auf die Einfachheit der Komposition, die
Schärfe der Details, den neutralen Hintergrund und gleichzeitig das subtile
Spiel mit der Tiefe der Fläche gelenkt. Und gerade diese Charakteristika,
machen die Präsenz der Porträtierten so stark spürbar, obwohl deren Blick
uns verborgen bleibt.
When something is not there, possibilities open
The tête-à-tête is an intimate meeting. It may be a way for us to meet our beloved or look at a picture that speaks to us. We are face to face or eye to eye with the person or the picture, rather than opposite them. I am looking at you at a moment when you are looking at me looking at you. Our gazes cross but their crossing cannot be captured; the dialogue with the picture takes place outside all representation.
However, representation may include a moment where one sees the other: we may look at one another or one may look at the other without the other seeing him or her. We may, of course, also observe ourselves or someone else in a mirror. In such cases, however, we are not eye to eye with ourselves or with the other. Our own face and our own gaze are never actually visible to us. I am of one flesh with the world, and 'my body sees only because it is a part of the visible in which it opens forth', as Maurice Merleau-Ponty says in his book, The Visible and the Invisible. I cannot, however, see the contours or gestures of the body in which I dwell in this world in the same way as others see them. Even to see my own back is difficult. And yet my being in the world consists of gestures, body positions and facial expressions, and my observing I-is immersed in my own experience of the world.
Immersed in the world, we are looked at from everywhere, even before we make the other the object of our gaze. Nowadays children are watched in the womb even before they make their first kick felt. I am watched, but what is a gaze? When someone turns his or her back to me demonstratively, I see a resentful gaze. The gaze is not the eye, i.e., the organ of vision. It articulates. In the field of vision, the gaze is outside; I am looked at, I am a picture. As the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan wrote, 'What determines me, at the most profound level, in the visible, is the gaze that is outside. It is through the gaze that I enter light and it is from the gaze that I receive its effects'.
When we look at the picture of someone in a state of hypnosis, or asleep, or dead, the psychoanalytical question arises: 'We see dreams, but do we watch them?' Pictures of a person who is asleep, dead or hypnotised expose a body that is not being exposed with the purpose of being looked at. The pictures both show and hide a dormant threat, the threat of dissolution, nullification and loss of control. Even though we know that we are permitted to watch, we still feel ashamed. We find ourselves eye to eye with something that ought to be invisible. The pictured people do not look, though clearly, they see with their mind's eye. Are we looking at a soul in the nude, comparable to a nude photograph taken surreptitiously?
When the soul or the inner space become nakedly visible, the position or perhaps rather the attitude of the body makes it apparent. In her book, Reading Rembrandt, Mieke Bal studies Rembrandt's drawings that describe a sitting nude as a mass of flesh - which is what the body becomes in a state of complete relaxation. The whole body expresses indifference to being seen; it is not available for eroticism; it lacks any exhibitionist intent. There is nothing on the background, only the background, a surface that signals the intimacy of the woman's position. A veil ought to be drawn to shut her from the view of the spectator.
At the same time, the lack of posing exposes a mask or veil with which the body makes a picture of itself and becomes like itself. Lacan uses the expression 'to make oneself seen'. But it is possible that the subject does not pose as an object in order to be a subject, but simply chooses not to represent.
Silent or Quiet?
Freud's teacher Jean-Martin Charcot had thousands of pictures taken of hysterical people in the photographic laboratory he founded in the hospital of Salpetriere in the middle of the 19th century. Charcot was a visualist who believed in what symptoms, gestures and postures can tell and registered what he saw in his theatre of living pathology. Freud was more interested in what is not seen or is only seen as holes. He began to study the psychic topography under the surface of the skin, where a visual study of the members of the body is unable to penetrate. He calls the unconscious 'the other scene'. It is a scene on which things are often left unrepresented.
To represent the unrepresented or to leave unrepresented? The gaze outside seems to guarantee that there is more to see than what I see: the invisible returns from the world back to the subject, thus opening a state of visibility. In a photograph, we may be able to see how visibility becomes visible and while looking at pictures, we may become aware of the conditions for possibility of visibility. However, visibility does not simply mean that we are able to perceive something that is either absent or present. Objects, perception, images and imagination are involved in visibility, but visibility is not reduced to reproductive representation. There is also imaginary representation, where the structure of desire as well as various unreal objects, such as daydreams, phantasies, melancholy or shadows enter the picture. Loss of control, relaxation, a vague recollection, involuntary movement and flight into the world of daydreams seem to imply a flaw or deficiency of some kind. They do not aim for the sublime or look for the unnamed; instead, they represent non-representation.
Speech and memory may act in the same way. As interruptions. They may be completely void or full to the point of exaggeration. Yet all speech demands an answer, as memory demands recall. The answer, however, may well be silence, where the void makes itself heard. In that case, we look outside speech for some reality or something represented that could fill the void. We let the body think and analyse its gestures, positions or behaviour in order to find what is not said. We study the reverse side and feel with our gaze the living material of human hair. We feed the eye's insatiable appetite with rich colours. We play music in order to hear the dance. The unseen and the unsaid brought out by a marriage or rather engagement of the senses, i.e., synergy, are answers to our failure to remain quiet.
Speech, pictures or memory may be void or they may show their reverse side. When expressing the observed by means such as these, they seem to be speaking of something that - though it may resemble a lived experience deceptively close - yet does not fully coincide with it. They bear evidence of past powers that have been pushed aside by events making their choices at crossroads. The Finnish language uses the word katsomo ('the looking place') to denote locations where people gather to follow various events. The word in English and many other languages is auditorium, the hearing place. When one looks at an empty katsomo, one sees oneself seeing. When the katsomo is quiet, one can hear hearing. One is eye to eye with the fact that something may take place or be swept away.
Text by Pia Sivenius
From: Marjaana Kella - 'Reversed Portraits' and 'Hypnosis Portraits', text by Pia Sivenius, dialogue by Jan Kaila; Van Zoetendaal Publishers, Amsterdam, 2002, ISBN 90 75574 22 3
Courtesy:
GALERIE POLLER Brückenstrasse 9-11 D-60594 Frankfurt am Main Phone
+49(0)69-624042
mail@galerie-poller.com
The following discussion took place between Jan Kaila and Marjaana Kella in
January 2002
KAILA - There is a strong sense of distance or even desolateness in your pictures. You in a way acknowledge and underline the limitations of photography in relation to 'reality'. Your approach is different from that of a lot of other photographers, who struggle with all kinds of deeper-than-the-surface social and/or psychological narratives and try to get their work to reveal something metaphysical or internal either about themselves or about the object they are photographing. You seem to be working in the opposite way: you minimise narration and concentrate on the surface. However, what's interesting and paradoxical about your 'superficiality' is that it doesn't eliminate metaphysics or the possibility of the internal. Quite the contrary: by emphasising the surface, you give the spectator plenty of space to imagine what remains invisible in the pictures. Surfaces generally command almost all our behavior - both unconscious and conscious - though we might not necessarily pay all that much attention to this.
KELLA - A photograph is dumb and still. That's why we can observe what's on display in a very special way. At the same time, we can observe what hasn't been displayed in it, but which can be guessed at: I mean clues or possibilities that can be found inside the pictures. A photograph is a lot like the image that we see, the image that light draws on our eyes and from the eyes on our brains. But what does this still reflection have to do with so-called reality?
I think a photograph has a reference-like relation to outer appearance, which as such reveals very little about what is inside or about the density of beings.
On the other hand, this is exactly the reason why a photograph can create its own 'reality' and broaden our understanding of the world in general.
My photographs are kind of studies of perception and experience, or of the interface between people's external and internal spaces. I think this is why my pictures make the impression of having been distanced. Since the photograph is my instrument, however, my pictures have to present something through which I can show what is not being represented. That's when the different surfaces and their relationships emerge, and that's where I hope to find the suspense between the external and the internal. My different topics can be seen as different methods in my study of these questions.
KAILA - In the construction of your portraits you follow the tradition where the spectator's attention is focused on the pictured person's face by means of reduction. This lures the spectator into mirroring the person pictured, perhaps even into identifying with him or her. However, in your series, the spectator and the person pictured do not meet in the usual way, because the people you photograph evade or reject 'getting in touch'. Even if they face the spectator, they are in an inner world of their own, in hypnosis, where the spectator has no access. Your pictures of landscapes or spaces work in a somewhat similar but perhaps more complex way: the places you picture are uninhabited. They have not really been socialized or contextualized. They are open and beyond reach until the spectator begins to give them a meaning or inhabit them in his or her imagination.
KELLA It is traditionally thought that people see themselves in other people as in a mirror. Portraits often try to follow this principle. Portraits taken from the back were a kind of obsession to me. I wanted to study what happens when eye contact or the individual facial features are removed. At the same time, I wanted to present what is left in as much detail as possible. A person pictured from behind is actually quite vulnerable, almost animal like. When I was taking the pictures, I concentrated on some detail and light, color and focus. Materiality acted as a sort of counterpart to what was not represented. Through simplicity I hoped to put the spectator in a new situation, where they are looking at no-thing. At the same time, I wanted to make visible the more general question of the density and opaqueness of surfaces. The use of hypnosis in the portraits served a similar purpose. In hypnosis, a person's inner mental images and outer appearance may be really wide apart. And even if the surface is presented in a lot of detail, we still can't know what's going on in the mind of the pictured person. When I was taking the pictures,
I noticed that the situations created between the hypnotist and the model gave me a totally new stage as a photographer. Hypnosis became a kind of method for dismantling the traditional formula of portrait picturing, where the person photographed often consciously tries to present him or herself for the portrait. The pre-built framework created a situation where I myself could withdraw to take pictures and allow the people I was photographing to express their own inner world or at least to give some hints of the existence of something that does not usually get expressed in pictures.
KAILA - I know you've been interested in the work of Gerhard Richter for a long time. As you know, Richter himself says that he paints photographs because the reality of the photograph, photographic reality, has become such a central part in our way of experiencing the world. In other words, Richter paints photographs in order to grasp the question of 'the world as a photograph'. And to succeed in this, he has to get rid of the recording quality that we often automatically assume that photography has. The question of photographs as pictures and not just traces begins to arise in Richter's paintings. Something similar happens in your work. Your experiments with reduction stress the iconic and symbolic nature of the photograph.
KELLA - Gerhard Richter has done a service to photography by painting the photographs so that they are removed from their link to reality. His work is related to a new interpretation of photography in contemporary art in general. In this situation, I think I can find a new way of doing things as a photographer. I can see photographs as dense and opaque. The photograph resembles the visible a lot but is not identical with it. In its stillness, it creates a completely new reality. However, we have grown used to interpreting the photograph as a transparent representation of reality. It cannot assume its own dimensions by separating itself from the outer appearance of things, because reproduction is its central characteristic. Paradoxically, the photograph resembles the world as much but also as little as does the image that the light draws onto our eyes and from there onto our brains. Photographs also tend to incline towards the surreal. That's why we can say that they have a particularly good possibility to create their own parallel reality. It's a reality constructed of fragments, and one where we can make use of the photograph's apparent similarity to the world. I believe that new ways of looking at photographs will open if we give up the attempt to use photography as transparent evidence. Instead of being bound to show reality, photographs can be seen as pictures of the world that lies outside our world of experience. Ultimately, the relationship of the photograph to 'reality' is contractual; it can be persuaded to enter into new kinds of contracts that continue to develop as pictures are produced and viewed.
Text von Jan Kaila
From: Marjaana Kella - 'Reversed Portraits' and 'Hypnosis Portraits', text
by Pia Sivenius, dialogue by Jan Kaila; Van Zoetendaal Publishers,
Amsterdam, 2002, ISBN 90 75574 22 3
Courtesy: GALERIE POLLER Brückenstrasse 9-11 D-60594 Frankfurt am Main Phone +49(0)69-624042 mail@galerie-poller.com
Marjaana Kella >Reversed< | >Hypnosis<
Schon vor einigen Jahren begann Marjaana Kella sich dem Thema >Porträt< zuzuwenden. Ihre >Reversed Portraits<, besitzen eine präzise ausgearbeitete Licht- und Farbtstimmung und erinnern damit an holländische Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, die Stillleben von ähnlicher Virtuosität hervorbrachte.
Es ist seltsam, aber die Bilder dieser Serie verhalten sich tatsächlich eher wie Stillleben, denn wie Portäts. Bewusst ausgeschlossen ist jedenfalls all das, was ein Porträt normalerweise ausmacht. Das Gesicht ist abgewendet, also werden wir niemals mit unseren Blicken das erfassen, womit wir das Bild eines Menschen ausmachen: Das Gesicht und vor allem die Augen-als der sogenannte Spiegel der Seele. Umso mehr dieser Verlust beim Anblick schließlich schmerzt, konzentriert sich die Aufmerksamkeit auf die wenigen, sichtbaren Details, die nun zum Leben erwachen. Das Abwesende scheint sich plötzlich voll und ganz in ihnen zu verkörpern. Haare und Textilien werden zu beunruhigend hyperrealen Indizien von menschlicher Existenz: Eine ziemlich paradoxe und ungewöhnliche Interpretation einer >Natura morte<.
Die Fotografien von Marjaana Kella sind immer auch ein Fingerzeig auf das, was nicht abgebildet werden kann. Umso perfekter werden dagegen die äußeren Gegebenheiten erfasst. Auch bei der Serie >Hypnosis< dient die Komposition mit ihrer starken Materialität von Detail, Pose und Farbigkeit dazu, das zu kompensieren, was vom Foto nicht wiedergegeben wird. Das Antlitz der Personen ist wohl erkennbar, aber das eigentliche Bild bleibt - wie die Augen - verschlossen.
Als Künstlerin plädiert Marjaana Kella für eine Fotografie, die nicht daran gebunden ist, >Realität< wiederzugeben. Entgegen dieser Erwartungshaltung betont sie deshalb in ihren Arbeiten bewusst immer wieder die Grenzen des Mediums. Eine Fotografie soll ihrer Meinung nach vielmehr ihre eigene Realität hervorbringen und damit als )Kunst-Werks unser Verständnis von Welt erhellen.
Text Claudia Stein
in: Marjaana Kella – portfolio. Photography now 4.02
BIOGRPAHY
Born in 1961, Orimattila, Finland
Lives and works in Helsinki
1987 - 1993 Master of Arts (Photography), University of Art and Design
Helsinki
1985 - 1986 Free Art School, Helsinki
1993 - 1999 Visiting lecturer at Department of Photography, University of
Art and Design Helsinki; The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki; Department of
Photography, Turku Polytechnic Arts & Media; Department of Photography,
Lahti Polytechnic, Institute of Design
SOLO
EXHIBITIONS
2004 Landesgalerie am
Oberösterreichischen Landesmuseum, Linz
2004 Galerie Fotohof,
Salzburg
2003 The Finnish Museum of
Photography, Helsinki
2002
Le
Centre
Photographique d'Île de France - Paris
2002 Galerie Poller,
Frankfurt am Main
2002 BildMuseet, Umeå, Sweden
2002 Zinc Gallery, Stockholm
2002 Van Zoetendaal Gallery, Amsterdam
2002 Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2002 Galleria Kari Kenetti, Helsinki
2001 Galleri Magnus Äklundh, Malmo, Sweden
2001 Valokuvagalleria Hippolyte, Helsinki
1999 Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden. With Anna Gaskell and Joachim
Schmid (catalogue) 1998 Valokuvagalleria Hippolyte, Helsinki
1993 Galleria Finnfoto, Helsinki
SELECTED GROUP
EXHIBITIONS
2002
Attachment+. Kunsthalle Lophem, Bruges, Belgium
2001 Widening Circle. Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
2001 Finnish Photography. Galleri Christian Dam, Oslo
2001 Scratches on Smooth Surface. Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg,
Sweden
2001 Magnetic North: Current Installation Photography in Finland.
The New Art Gallery Walsall, England
1999 Voloa & Varjosta. The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki
1999 Nordiskt foto. Skövde Konsthall, Sweden
1999 Tila - Espaces. Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.
1998 Blue You. Into-galleria, Helsinki
1998 Me, myself and I. Bensow House, Helsinki (catalogue)
1995 The Play of Living Forms.
Galleria Otso,
Espoo, Finland
1993 Antologio dello Fotografia Finlandese uno Luce dal Nord.
Rome
1993 Work in Progress. Into-galleria, Helsinki
1992
Decennium.
Bucharest, Scotland, Istanbul, Ankara, Barcelona, Madrid (catalogue)
1991 Mesenaatti. Oulainen, Finland (catalogue)
1989 Nuorten valokuvaajien näyttely (Exhibition of Young Photographers).
Helsinki
MUSEUMS AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
The State´s Art
Collection in Sweden
Hasselblad
Center, Göteborg, Sweden
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasama, Helsinki, Finland
The Finnisch Museum of Photography, Helsinki
The Private Collection of Gallup AD
The Private Collection of Pentti Kouri
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS AND ARTICLES
Marjaana Kella - 'Reversed Portraits' and 'Hypnosis Portraits', text
by Pia Sivenius, dialogue by Jan Kaila; Van Zoetendaal Publishers, Amsterdam,
2002, ISBN 90 75574 22 3
Magnetic North: Current Installation
Photography in Finland -
Caryn Faure Walker and Mika Hannula; The Finnish Museum of Photography and University
of Art and Design Helsinki, Helsinki, 2001
The Golden Age of Finnish Photography
- Pirkko Siitari;
Arttu No.2, Helsinki,
2001
Fact, Fiction and
Photography -
Alistair Robinson,
www.londonort.co.uk
magazine,
2000
Face - Erik van der Heeg; Zinc
Gallery, Stockholm, 2000
Tuomo-Juhani Vuorenmaa and Jukka Kukkonen, eds., Voloo: Otteita suomalaisen
valokuvan historiaan; The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, 1999
Tuomo-Juhani Vuorenmaa and Jukka Kukkonen, eds., Varjosta: Tutkielmia
suomalaisen valokuvan historiasta; The Finnish Museum of Photography,
Helsinki, 1999
Tuomo-Juhani Vuorenmaa, ed., Finnish Photography 1998-1999. Musta Taide,
Helsinki, 1999
Focus on
Finland -
Caryn Faure
Walker;
Creative Camera NO.355, December-January,
London, 1999
Marjaana Kella & Marja Söderlund, Nuori Taide;
Hanki ja jää, Tampere, 1992
Marjaana Kella
-
Timo
Kelaranta, Volokuvolehti NO-5,
Helsinki,
1990
Curly-haired man, 1997 / 2002, edition
of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted
on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Woman in a patterned chemise, 1997 /
2002, edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x
59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Man in blue sweater, 1997 / 2002,
edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Short-haired woman, 1997 / 2002,
edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Man wearing glasses, 1997 / 1998,
edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Girl in pink cardigan, 1997 / 2002,
edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5
cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Woman in a green cardigan, 1997 /
2002, edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x
59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Grey-haired man, 1997 / 1998, edition
of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Woman, wearing her hair in a knot, 1997 / 1998, edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Man in a velvet jacket, 1997 / 1998, edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Man in a white shirt, 1997 / 1998, edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
Woman in a circle-patterned shirt, 1997 / 1998, edition of 3, C-type print
(high lustre, mounted on aluminium), 76 x 59,5 cm, copyright Marjaana Kella
© Marjaana Kella &
GALERIE POLLER
Brückenstrasse 9-11
60594 Frankfurt am Main Germany
Phone +49(0)69-624042
mail-ffm@galerie-poller.com
547 West 27th Street, 2nd Floor New York NY
10001 USA Phone (212) 967 5700
mail-nyc@galerie-poller.com
www.galerie-poller.com