SIGHT-SEEING
Thanks to a beautiful photography of Michael Danner I have recently stumbled upon the project SIGHT-_SEEING curated by Wolfgang Scheppe for the Tyrol tourist board. Scheppe suggested not to use the typical imagery as blue skies heavily photoshopped. Seven photographers (Michael Danner, Dominik Gigler, Monika Höfler, Verena Kathrein, Jörg Koopmann, Andrew Phelps, Matthias Ziegler) were invited to a “workshop” and commissioned to shoot what they see over a 10 day period. Finally 5 photographs of each photographer were choosen for Tyrol summer advertising campaign “So nah - So fern”, which translates “So close - So far”. Scheppe produced a touring exhibition and the catalogue SIGHT-_SEEING, both showing the work as one. The book is structered in loose chapters (it doesn’t has chapters for each photographer, the pictures are all mixed together). The catalogue won a gold medal in this years photography book award “Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2012”. So I’ve asked the German photographer to tell us more about his experience within this interesting project.
Steve Bisson
What was your perspective and how you translated the commitment’s request in your project?
«Tyrol tourist board together with Wolfgang Scheppe, professor for politics of representation at IUAV Venice, decided to commission 7 photographers to shoot their summer campaign. We did a workshop to discuss ideas and conceptions of Tyrol and its visual representation. At last all photographers spend approx. 10 days in Tyrol photographing what came to our eye. Without a briefing failure was part of the commission. We completed the commission with a second workshop were photographers and client discussed the results and made a final selection of the photographs. The works were then used in advertising Tyrol and the remaining work was made into an exhibition and catalogue.»
What were the main challenges you faced in making this body of work?
«We were working without a proper brief and had all the freedom one could imagine. The task for me was to free myself from any expectations the client might have and develop a relationship to the alpine land, urbanity and people. Just stroll up and down the mountains and see what there is».
What is your personal impression of the landscape, and of this particular human geography?
«To me Tyrol is full of contradictions and contrasts. In winter everything is covered under fresh snow and has the postcard look. We were photographing over the summer months and all the traces from the skiing industry lay bare. The sublime and ordinary are so close together which made it an exciting part of Austria to explore and to develop a visual language».
© All copyright remains with Michael Danner