Das Rudel III
Connecting Beuys’ 'Das Rudel' with 'Das Rudel III'
In 'Das Rudel', Joseph Beuys presented a VW van with 24 felt-covered sleds trailing from its rear, each equipped with survival tools like felt, fat, and a flashlight. The sleds appear to escape or spill out from the vehicle—as if in urgent response to an invisible crisis—symbolizing instinct, survival, community, and the primal nature of movement beyond rationality.
In the 'Das Rudel III' series, the VW van is replaced by a modern silver convertible. Instead of wooden sleds, sleek black devices (dissolving devices for slide presentations from Stumpfl in Wallern, Upper Austria) are tethered to the car with long yellow cords. The bright cables mirror the connective function of Beuys’ sled ropes but speak in the language of modern networks—electricity, data, signal transmission.
Where Beuys used felt and fat as insulating materials and spiritual symbols of healing, the yellow cables and black boxes hint at an updated toolkit for survival: connectivity, technology, energy. The juxtaposition of the car in pastoral landscapes (cornfields, wheat fields) suggests a kind of techno-nomadism, or a dislocation—a digital “pack” trying to reconnect to its environment. The orderly yet scattered arrangement of the devices feels animalistic, like a scattered herd or, again, a Rudel.
2025
bei amstetten - running away from photography
The photographs mainly the first and the second one presented exemplify a compelling dialogue between presence and absence, action and anticipation, through the photographic apparatus itself. The images are charged with a paradoxical tension: the camera stands fixed, stable, and seemingly neutral, yet it operates as a potent symbol of subjective agency.
In the first image, the figure appears playful, almost caught mid-leap, emphasizing the dynamic, spontaneous relationship between photographer and subject. The humor embedded here underscores the theatrical dimension of photography—the subtle reminder that the act of capturing images is itself performative. The tripod-mounted camera, quiet and central, remains indifferent to the ongoing scene yet is crucially involved, silently mediating reality.
The second photograph offers a different kind of narrative. Here, the figure walks away, perhaps toward a photographic subject outside the frame or perhaps abandoning the photographic process altogether. The composition transforms the camera from mere observer to a deserted witness, highlighting photography’s inherent temporality—the camera waits, observing emptiness, marking a moment of potential that never fully materializes within the frame itself.
Together, these images articulate the conceptual dualities fundamental to photographic theory: motion versus stasis, subjective action versus mechanical neutrality, and the perpetual oscillation between visibility and invisibility. Ultimately, they provoke contemplation on the hidden narratives behind the photographic act, reminding viewers that every image encapsulates both the seen and the unseen.
2025
fading beauties
Mushrooms are wonderful creatures. I'm in the forest mainly because of the mushrooms. They are like fairies. Diverse, short-lived in their fruit, sometimes strange in shape, colorful. Today I went to Styria to find the last edible mushrooms of the season. There wasn't much left to pick. The temperature had dropped below zero too often. I only carried about two kilograms to the car.
But I found dozens of different mushrooms that were just about to perish. I don't know what I want to write about right now. All I know is that mushrooms are wonderful creatures. I think they are one of the least researched creatures.
2024
Santorini
I was moved by the authenticity of the older photos of Oía and Fira on Santorini decades ago. One photo in particular, showing a donkey climbing up a stair-like street, made a lasting impression on me. Despite my desire to visit, various reasons prevented me from doing so.
Now I was there. The image I had in my head was nothing like what I was seeing now. The donkeys are the poorest creatures on the island, no doubt about it. They are poorly fed, force obese tourists from cruise ships up the mountain in the worst heat, and sleep on nasty, hard-hearted, rude men with whips. On the other hand, I have never seen a city that has been completely renovated in style and extended to the highest standard at every easily accessible point. Up to 15,000 tourists from cruise ships stream through the small towns every day, and they lose none of their charm.
This is undoubtedly due to the extremely hospitable Greeks you meet everywhere here.
2024
broken fragments
Clay shards. Over forty years ago, I set out with one goal: to collect shards from the Bronze Age, Roman times, and the Middle Ages. I then packed a small rucksack. I was fourteen or fifteen years old at the time, and I brought along just a little food. Then I took the train or bus in the direction of an excavation I knew of or near a field of which I had aerial photographs. I collected the shards from the freshly plowed field—the Rigol plow was the best because it plows very deep—and brought them home after many hours to wash them in the garden. Then I labeled them and put them with the others.
It was like yesterday. I went by car instead. I went to Oberleiser Berg, an ancient settlement area where the Romans also had a camp deep in enemy territory. The shards I found yesterday are from the Bronze Age and Roman period. The older ones are clearly identifiable by the firing technique (layered firing) and the impurity of the clay. If the potter had known that his work would be honored after 4,000 years, he would not have been able to do anything with this knowledge. I can't really do anything with the shards either.
2024
It looks like I'm on the phone, and it looks like ...
it looks like I'm on the phone, and it looks like I'm too obese: last fall, I purchased a wide-angle lens with a focal length of 8mm. this was at a time when I had already finished with photography. yesterday, I drove to Karnabrunn in the southern Weinviertel in charming accompaniment to go for a walk. I had the camera with me and I was ready to use the very wide-angle lens. I also brought a tripod. I also brought a tripod, obviously. I mounted the camera on the tripod and pointed the lens at the landscape. I set the film simulation to black and white with a red filter. what I saw through the viewfinder was satisfactory, but I decided to stage myself once again. the strong wide-angle lens distorted me to some extent, especially at the edge of the picture. I'm not really that fat! I have just put on weight recently due to constant eating and snacking.
2024
fungus
Yesterday, I was in the forest. I was on a mission to find mushrooms, specifically the two edible varieties: king fungus and chanterelle. The drought of the last three summers was undoubtedly the reason I no longer expected to find mushrooms, let alone a variety of mushrooms. In 2020, I found and photographed 46 different mushrooms on an afternoon walk. Yesterday, I only had my camera with me on one of my four walks. The forest floor was damp for the first time in years, thanks to heavy rainfall over the past few weeks. I no longer assign photography too great a role in my life for several reasons. I only photographed specimens that were easy to photograph, which you can see here. I counted a total of around 70 different mushrooms yesterday, which was a good mushroom year. I also loaded up the car with around 5 kilograms of chanterelles and boletus edulis. I had driven around 400 kilometers to get them.
2024
The picture shows the image itself as absent
A few years ago, when I had the idea of taking a book title seriously and trying it out in practice, I made a serious mistake. I photographed the display of a camera that had just exposed a photo together with the subject in front of the lens, in front of the lenses. Sometimes I set up up to five cameras in a row. The mistake was that you could see on the display exactly what the subject was in front of the lens. Mistake. Now I'm repeating the series. I am now photographing myself in the middle of the subject. And then I photograph the display in display mode (with myself as a partial subject). Now the picture itself is actually absent. Because I am taking the exposed photo with myself in the foreground of the subject and I am no longer there because I am taking this very photo. With an analog camera. Scans may follow at some point.
2024
Galle
Together with my dear friend Kathrin Messner, I once again went on a trip to the coastal town of Galle in southern Ceylon. We had a bit to do there and then we walked further south along the fortress wall. It was a Sunday and so we were surrounded by countless people of all ages, races and religions. The sun was setting, the streetlights were lit, we were in the eyrie of pure leisure in the city of jewel dealers. Unforgettable hours.
2023
Brief (garden)
I have wanted to visit the garden for more than a decade. It is located in the south of Sri Lanka, near the town of Beruwala. I visited it with Kathrin Messner, who had told me a lot about her friendship with Bevis Bawa over the years. We had a wonderful time in this special place. Brief Garden is a landscape garden and former home - designed by landscape architect and owner Bevis Bawa. The entrance to the garden is located through to ornate gateposts, crowned with male and female figures. The gateposts were created by Bawa and Donald Friend, an Australian artist and represent a fusion of Eastern and Western influences. The path then leads to two additional entrances. The first, a black and white door set in a mustard yellow wall, leads to the house via a curved staircase. The second leads down into the garden but screens any views of the house.
2023
I am the son of Thomas Bernhard
In 1982, the exceptional Austrian author Thomas Bernhard finished work on his novel 'Auslöschung' in the Croatian coastal town of Lovran. I was 14 years old at the time and my mother had decided two years earlier to stop cleaning and washing for me so that she could use the time she had gained to extend her reading time. One of the authors she was reading at the time was Thomas Bernhard. Today, I can iron, mop and vacuum perfectly well. I can also write. My mother must have done everything right. As Thomas Bernhard was one of the triggers for this development, I visited Lovran for several days to walk in the Austrian's footsteps and think about him.
2023
Slides, too many slides
When I started reframing the slides that my father had pressed out of the frames and glued onto transparencies just over three years ago, I had no idea where it would lead. Three years later, I had around 500,000 slides in my possession. That's a lot that I will never be able to look at. I'm also no longer interested in looking at other people's photos. Consequently, I took some of these slides with me to Sri Lanka to stick them in the sand on the beach of the Lakadive Sea and wait for the water to take them away. A wonderful moment.
2023
On recovery from the projection
Such a slide projector has been designed, laid out and built for continuous or at least frequent projection. A few decades ago. At that time, no one thought anything of it. Today, when we listen to a psychotherapist, we wonder. She, if she is of a certain ilk, also constantly projects - her ideas into the poor client.
Well, the projectors that appear in the photo series don't have much to do with psychotherapists.
I wanted to give them, because I like them, the opportunity to simply see the landscape outside. On this bright, hot summer day.
2022
the heidegger files
When the philosopher Martin Heidegger died in 1976, my grandfather Josef Nachtnebel acquired one of Heidegger's leather pants from his estate, which had not yet been released. These are now in my possession. Also good. Years ago, I used to put on these pants and photograph my children and myself in them. Today I no longer do that. I found a replacement 25 years ago in the form of a short pig leather pants. During my last stay in France, at a very specific place that was familiar to me from a previous stay in the area, I began to think myself into the philosopher Heidegger and then to walk out of this situation as Martin Heidegger.
2022
a leica from the back
A camera does what it was invented, built and finally bought for. It exposes an inserted film. I shoot exclusively with slide film. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, over the last three years I have accumulated nearly one hundred excellent slide projectors from Leica, Rollei and Hasselblad, and secondly, over the same period I have accumulated magazines and frames for about 250,000 slides. A small number of the magazines are still empty and there are also a few thousand slide frames. I would like to give meaning to the existence of these objects one last time. I do not know right.
2022
6 degrees north latitude
In the second year of a pandemic, I decided to travel to Ahungalla, Sri Lanka. The country was paralyzed by successive lockdowns, and I only met Sinhalese on the plane and in the country. However, the Bogenvillya of the one world foundation was by no means asleep. In the attached school, we dismantled the darkroom, which no one really needed anymore. A whale was washed ashore for a day, and I only met a few fishermen on the beach. After a few days, another lockdown was announced and took effect. It was heavenly on the site of the one world foundation, which I hardly left. I would go again in a heartbeat and stay longer. Lockdown or not.
2021
digital is the new analog
Today I hiked through valleys and over hills in the eastern Waldviertel. This landscape is extremely unspectacular on a warm winter morning. I was traveling with two cameras, one digital and one analog. I can't write down the idea that I had now, I don't want it to be lost through the words.
2021
projection lenses
Today I was walking through a quiet valley. A river, a stream, meandered along the path. A couple of birds chirped. It's winter, but winter has now become harmless, it's too warm, much too gentle somehow. During the hike, which I documented with cameras, my view of the landscape, of details, became increasingly absent. I fell into thinking about my life. I am fifty two years old. Ultimately, I always get stuck on the same train of thought. In a mania that was constantly increasing over a long period of time, I have accumulated books, records, films and slides, texts, notes and the like. I think that someday I will start to look at all these beautiful things, to look through them, to start to discover them. And with this thought several panics arise in parallel. One of them concerns my fear that slide projectors or film projectors will break. And then I want to have a replacement. And I also don't know at what distances and with which remaining projectors I will view the slides.
change film
A few years ago, I started putting analog film back into my cameras. It's like riding a bike - if you can do it once, you can do it forever. Unless there's a never-ending series of short circuits in your head.
2022
however, I got my point
across subliminally by the use of a slide projector. A nice lady from the village of Ladendorf in the northeastern Weinviertel gave me a slide projector today. A Leica Pradovit P 2000. I asked and found out that the machine had been in the basement for the past fifteen years. Idle, however. I did what had to be done. The projector and I went on a trip to the Weinviertel, around Ladendorf. I assumed that the slide projector had been misused for nothing other than projections, constant projections. Obviously, the projector had never been allowed to see for himself.
One may wonder why the slide projector is always looking at the camera. How is he supposed to see it for himself? Well, he has to look away from the picture. Because that's his new perspective. And I can hardly avoid a wafer-thin contradiction to the title of this series of pictures.
2020
two pradovits, out of duty
A striking limestone cliff in the Lower Austrian wine district, which is under nature protection, is called the Staatzer cliff or Staatzer mountain. Geographically, the Staatzer cliff belongs to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and dominates the only slightly hilly landscape from a distance of about 100 meters. The hill is 332 m high and is located in the municipality of Staatz. The slopes are home to remarkable rock steppes and dry grasslands of regional importance. The Staatz castle ruins are at the top.
I hauled a Pradovit slide projector up the steep, stony path. Hundreds of stag beetles were out and I kept bumping into one of them. The sun was slowly setting. I wanted to show the P2000, which used to belong to an Alpine club, a mountainous region. A very small mountain region. The Staatzer cliff. The moon had risen and there was silence at the summit. I couldn't find out if the slide projector was emotionally moving. So I got off the mountain again.
2020
murtal
A short trip to southern Austria, Styria, the Mur valley. There, near the village of Fohnsdorf, I took up quarters. Fohnsdorf, a former mining settlement, is the most hideous, repulsive small town I know. Garden gnome collections in the front gardens are still the most harmless there.
I fled to the mountains and the valleys in between. The return in the evening was bearable because I was accommodated in a stylish castle hotel 300 meters off the village.
Even if a traditional Formula 1 track shines in new splendor in nearby Spielberg, the Mur Valley is far from being out of the crisis of the closed mine.
2020
Die Zeit
Some time ago I subscribed to a weekly newspaper. It's called "Die Zeit". I just haven't been able to read this wonderful periodical for a long time as there is no time left for it. It is in the mailbox every Thursday. Then I get it ready to browse. What never happenes. One day I put the newspaper on a table in the garden and went to make some coffee. Then something happened to me and in the evening I closed the door without paying attention to the newspaper at the garden table. Two days later, it had been raining and there was a keen wind blowing, I found the newspaper spread in the garden. Die Zeit is a beauty even unread.
2020
in hallstatt with two pradovits
For some reason, Hallstatt is one of the most visited tourist attractions in Austria. There is not so much to see here. The most spectacular thing is an ossuary. It is filled to the brim with bones and skulls. The respective sons traditionally painted the bones of their parents, fathers, which had been excavated again. The city is tiny and the streets are narrow and lathy. Nevertheless, thousands of people crowd in the small town every day. Of course, everything was empty here during the Sars-Covid19 pandemic. I took advantage of this fact. I wanted to see the town as I had seen it more than 40 years ago. Back then with my parents.
In tribute to my father, I carried two Pradovit slide projectors with me. And up a mountain I dragged my feet with them. It is a mountain where you can see well down to Hallstatt.
2020
colorplan et al.
Shortly after my father's death, I started buying Leica slide projectors. In the last years of his life my father had pushed all the slides out of the frames and glued the slides onto foils with tiny strips of tixo. I take back all 20,000 slides. This is a good time to think about and think of my father.
Suddenly an unsuspected fear developed in me that my Leica Pradovit Color 2 could break, at some point and then I would stand there with 30,000 of my own and my father's.
It was favorable that the first wave of Sars-Covid19 was going through the world. I searched and had dozens of projectors sent to me. Now the fear is gone. Because I know that my own Color 2 will do its job forever.
Here are some of the projector's accumulated lenses.
2020
thirty by thirty in retz
Retz is a small town northwest of Vienna. It is close to the Czech border. The hills around are dedicated to wine growing. There are extraordinary biotopes between these vineyards. Rounded rock formations alternate with plant islands. It is extremely dry here. This gives rare plants and animals an opportunity to spread.
I delimited a small region of 30 by 30 feet and ran a thread all around.
2020
two pradovits on dry grass
There are numerous places in the north-west of Vienna between the vineyards, between forests and on hills with special flora and fauna. Finally I found another of these places on my forays through the Weinviertel. The grass is rather dry there, trees don't grow big, there are shrubs now and then. Here you will find animals and plants that are otherwise found only 70 miles to the southeast in Burgenland. Special orchids for example. Mantids, rare grasses, the wonderful pasque flower, dwarf iris. I wanted to show this wonderful arid landscape to my newly arrived Pradovits. They had had to spend the past 10 years in a Tyrolean cellar.
Rocks appear here and there from the meadow again and again, indications of a long dry sea at this point.
2020
mik beuys rudel eins
When Joseph Beuys showed his installation "Das Rudel" in 1969 and opened a seemingly endless space for interpretation, of which I didn't notice anything at all. Almost two decades later, however, I became aware of Beuys. At that time I was taking pictures with Leica cameras and looking at the slides with a Leitz Pradovit projector. Although I knew Beuys' ideas, the focus was on the idea of grazing his objects. As a result, I repeatedly recreated personal versions of his installations and thus understood them. Today I am familiar with his ideas, so I can start tackling the last replica of one of his works. The pack - "Das Rudel". I use the technical-visual component of my first encounter with Beuys, the slide projector, a warming machine with special odors and a movement on the stand. In addition, a car, the roof of which I can open if I let the sun warm me, and move through the rural landscape of the Weinviertel. Something like that. Completed with the original 24 impersonators.
2020
Das Bild zeigt das Bild selber als Abwesendes
"The picture shows the picture itself as absent" has been my number 7 topic for the past two years. I always thought that this should be increased again. And by photographing a camera (and what it was photographing with it) that just took a picture, and what it was photographing is a slide projector, I got that increase. The slide projector cannot usually take a photo, it makes photos more visible, so to speak, enlarges them. And in this series of photos we see "into" several lenses of slide projectors. On the floor under the slide projector that was just being photographed there are several slide projectors that have either already been photographed or are waiting to be photographed. It is the infinitely increased perversion of photographing.
2020
wetzleinsdorf karnabrunn
Wetzleinsdorf and Karnabrunn are two villages in the northern Weinviertel. There are gentle hills between the two villages. Forest alternates with fields and cherry trees grow in the forest. In the fields, rapeseed alternates with grain and beets. In spring you hike on the edge of the forest in a sea of white and yellow flowers. Everywhere you see animals that are pleasantly shy. It is completely silent everywhere. And thanks to CoVid19 also in the sky.
2020
mik beuys das rudel study I
When Joseph Beuys showed his installation "Das Rudel" in 1969 and opened a seemingly endless space for interpretation, of which I didn't notice anything at all. Almost two decades later, however, I became aware of Beuys. At that time I was taking pictures with Leica cameras and looking at the slides with a Leitz Pradovit projector. Although I knew Beuys' ideas, the focus was on the idea of grazing his objects. As a result, I repeatedly recreated personal versions of his installations and thus understood them. Today I am familiar with his ideas, so I can start tackling the last replica of one of his works. The pack - "Das Rudel". I use the technical-visual component of my first encounter with Beuys, the slide projector, a warming machine with special odors and a movement on the stand. In addition, a car, the roof of which I can open if I let the sun warm me, and move through the rural landscape of the Weinviertel. Something like that.
2020
explaining the peculiarities
of the schmida-valley to a pradovit a. Someone recently gave me a slide projector for free. A Leitz Pradovit A. An interesting model, if you are clever, you can upgrade the device so that it plays a magazine with slides in an endless loop. And because the projector worked just fine, I showed him a little bit of his former neighborhood. The Schmida valley. He didn't know that yet.
2020
go for a walk with two pradovits
Holy Saturday in times of the Corona virus. I decide to take a little walk. And because the two CA 2502-Pradovits have been good lately, I'll take them with me. I agree with them what is permitted and what is not. We take the convertible. The two are silent on the trip and are probably looking out the window. We walk a bit and the crying begins. They just stay back and sit on the floor. I admonish them, but it's no use, they want to be carried. I do that. And I show them pictures from which slides are no longer photographed.
2020
several negatives
A virus is currently determining a not inconsiderable part of my life. As a result, I have been spending a lot of time at home for weeks. So I sort items and issues that have been mixed up over the years. I bring order to my photo negatives. There are of course several categories. An important category is whether I find the negatives interesting. Photos are often much more interesting as negative than as positive. I've always been a lousy film developer with a talent for film damage. Today I artistically photographed the negatives and developed them in Photoshop Lightroom.
2020
go for a walk with a pradovit
Today it is largely the case that slide projectors only project photos from the past. Hardly any slides are photographed and developed. I am sorry for the practical slide projectors. They are becoming less and less important. On my 52nd birthday I spontaneously decide to show my favorite slide projector those pictures of today that are no longer photographed as a slide. Mainly because I left my old camera at home. What other sense would the whole thing have had?
2020
vade mecum!
Something by Ai Weiwei, something that belonged to Tupac Yupanqui, something owned by Peter Aufschnaiter, something that maybe once belonged to a certain Maturus Ursi, something by someone who had his jaw torn off by a bear, something for the film projector, something of a mammoth, something from outer space, something made of alabaster, in it something from an alpine meadow that I should have eaten raw.
2020
projector number n c
I got my first slide projector when I was about 10 years old because my father bought a new one. He photographed a lot. So I got a Braun D40. A device with wonderful smells when in use, and even when switched off. My father took more photos and I got a Rollei P350. Only the lens is left of it. After working in a bank for several years and buying some Leicas and lots of lenses, I was no longer satisfied with the rollei slide projector. That is why I bought a Leica Pradovit Color 2, an incredible machine, from a photo dealer that was locking up, the machine again provided the best smells. It cost about a month and a half of salary. A little later someone gave me a Rollei P11 for my medium format slides, which I had previously viewed with a manually operated projector from Hungary, self-import. Not too long ago I noticed that the then completely unaffordable projectors from Leitz, Leica, had apparently become unsaleable and were therefore extremely affordable. And one photographer mentioned in a conversation, en passant, that he collected old Leitz slide projectors. That made an impression. I got all kinds of this characteristic devices. I am now working on the realization of an installation, a Joseph-Beuys-cover of the work "Das Rudel". I replace the sleds with the projectors, the VW bus with my Saab. Again, I don't know why I'm doing all of this, so I made every effort to find out when I was writing. Unsuccessfully in a way.
2020
noisy sky
Another day of the week. Wednesday. I am in the floodplain forest in Lobau before noon. With the photo camera. Nobody far and wide. I enter the riparian forest and a minute later a jet plane passes over me at nearly ground level. I know an international airport is relatively near to my current location. I walk a bit into the floodplain forest, towards a large river, the Danube. Every half a minute, every two minutes, a plane thunders over me. I take pictures of the winter trees. It is warm, a possible side effect of the so-called climate change. Everything is a little gray, even brown, at least opaque. I can see the bellies of the planes blow by blow. I try to walk directly under these bellies. I do not succeed, however, because the newcomers obviously do not fly exactly on their airways or there are airways lying close to each other. It's deafening loud in the great outdoors. Finally I reach the Danube and it starts to rain. I turn around because I have something else to do.
2020
alii tumuli tres
Three burial mounds in the far northeast of Austria. I put tripods and a folding chair on top of these sacred places. This is not good. But somehow it has to be. I make this place an important one. For today. For me. For you. Of course I remember that someone was buried here thousands of years ago. That many people with many baskets heaped earth here. And then for thousands of years new people treated this place with respect. But different me.
2020
projector number n
I got my first slide projector when I was about 10 years old because my father bought a new one. He photographed a lot. So I got a Braun D40. A device with wonderful smells when in use, and even when switched off. My father took more photos and I got a Rollei P350. Only the lens is left of it. After working in a bank for several years and buying some Leicas and lots of lenses, I was no longer satisfied with the rollei slide projector. That is why I bought a Leica Pradovit Color 2, an incredible machine, from a photo dealer that was locking up, the machine again provided the best smells. It cost about a month and a half of salary. A little later someone gave me a Rollei P11 for my medium format slides, which I had previously viewed with a manually operated projector from Hungary, self-import. Not too long ago I noticed that the then completely unaffordable projectors from Leitz, Leica, had apparently become unsaleable and were therefore extremely affordable. And one photographer mentioned in a conversation, en passant, that he collected old Leitz slide projectors. That made an impression. I got all kinds of this characteristic devices. I am now working on the realization of an installation, a Joseph-Beuys-cover of the work "Das Rudel". I replace the sleds with the projectors, the VW bus with my Saab. Again, I don't know why I'm doing all of this, so I made every effort to find out when I was writing. Unsuccessfully in a way.
2020
darkness
I awake and feel the fell of the darkness, not today, I pray. What hours, oh what black hours we have spent this day, this night! What sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light’s delay. With witness I speak this. But where I say hours, I mean years, I mean life. And my lament is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent to dearest him that lives alas! Away. I am gall, I am heartburn. Life’s most deep decree bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. Self yeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see the lost are like this, and their scourge to be as I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
2020
stop dry lakes
A winter day in February. A nature reserve. No one to be seen, far and wide. Heavy clouds in the sky. Drops falling every now and then. Greylag geese move from one field to the next. As a couple or in a large group. The salt ponds are largely dry. The floor, torn open by the drought, reminds me of photos from drought areas in africa. But here you can feel certain that the water is coming again. It will soon rise from below and will be supplemented from above. In good time before and during the first birds have returned from their winter quarters. Until then, death seems to be writing its message on the bottom of the small lakes and meadows. I encounter these messages at every turn. Probably because I almost feel compelled to overcome the barriers. I bring myself into this relative death zone. Fresh as a daisy.
2020
fungus
Fungus. Stroll through the forest. Through the clear wood, through the thicket. An astonished look on the ground. Take a boletus with you. A chestnut bolete. Chanterelles too. The late season brings unknown genera and species. I notice them, circle them, approach them. I can smell them, know how they feel without touching them, and most likely I'm wrong. What I see is less than the tip of the iceberg, I hardly notice anything. I can't make out the mycelium. A living thing below me. An enigmatic creature. A meaningless look in the mirror.
2019
time flies
Life's but a strolling shadow, a paltry player, that struts and agonises his hour upon the stage, and then is remembered no more. It is a concern told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. In time we hate that which we often fear.
2018 - 2020
italia
We invented gonzo tourism in Italy. Drive to a city with the most extraordinary art treasures. Go out to eat. Go for a walk. Notice the culture in the corner of your eye. Change the city and do the same there. And go home after the third, fourth city.
2019
labin
Labin is located on the east coast of Istria. Labin supposedly has an interesting old town. I this can not confirm. The city makes a living, like the villages all around, from mining. Or, better, made a living from mining. There is a beautiful stretch of coast nearby. I didn't understand Labin at all.
2019 - 2020
bisamberg in spring
The Bisamberg is the last foothill of the Alps. Approximately. The climate on this hill is Pannonian. Not everywhere. But on some slopes there are animals and plants living that you would find much further south. My father was interested in orchids, so we often were on research on the slopes of the Bisamberg. Today I am living at the foot of the Bisamberg and I am far too rarely up there.
2020
community service
One of my sons opted for the community service instead of huddling around with a gun. this service is a barely compensated service to the community. That's how it should be. But what does a young man do who walked around clothed with the most selected designer items up to community service?
2019
krk
In summer, the island of Krk is haunted by German, Dutch and Scandinavian tourists with caravans, belly bags, drinks bottles, half-length trousers and nail fungi. In winter it is deserted here. Only now has it become apparent how beautiful this barren island is. You can stay in one place and be amazed. And imagine how wonderful spring will be when orchids everywhere push their leaves and flowers out of the ground. Before they dry up or are trampled in early summer. Then the cycle starts again.
2019
immer wieder so rosaartige pilze
I get in the car and drive south. Not very far, for an hour and a half. The area is called Roseggers Waldheimat. I got to know what forest is there. 50 years ago. And everything that belongs to the forest. Of course, the region has changed during this half century. But not too much. The streets have become wider. And the paths for the carts were paved. And yellow signs have been added for the hikers. But deer continue to graze on the edge of the forest and mushrooms grow out of the ground. Of course, different mushrooms grow in autumn than in summer. And until now I didn't notice them. They are beautiful. Those under the open sky seem to be happy about the last rays of the sun. Those under the branches of the conifers seem to be taking part in a beauty contest in the half-light. I roam around and discover how much beauty there is again.
2019
veiled unveiled
Just a piece of cloth but laden with countless facets of meaning is causing a stir: the headscarf used by devout women to cover their head, their face, and occasionally their whole body. The religious duty of women to cover their head has been part of European culture for centuries, though. Its story begins with early Christianity and has remained a vibrant issue to this day. In the Christian tradition, the veil becomes a symbol of dignity, chasteness, and virginity, and Saint Paul urges women to veil their faces when talking to God. Loose hair is regarded as immoral and only accepted as the exclusive prerogative of the Virgin Mary. The covered head is one of the privileges of married women, similar to the traditional habit of nuns, with mourners wearing the widow’s veil. In the Late Middle Ages, dress codes determine how women are to cover the heads and necks in the cities of Europe.
2019
killing and humiliation
killing is part of religion as much as hypocrisy is. christianity, islam, judaism and the so-called peace driven religions such as buddhism and what not. the problem with said organizations is, that there are people involved. and they are constantly lying to themselves, be it about worth, philosophy and the biggest of them all moral, as if there was such a thing among the most ruthless of all animals. exploitation and limitless cruelty towards anything that seems to be weak and helpless. No buddha, dharma, mohammed or jesus is going to change anything about that, they solely are going to serve as an excuse and to justify immoral actions. so rich and poor people don’t have to feel bad about their actions. it be stupid to make religion responsible for any of those actions.
the 10 commandments and neither the noble eightfold path is going to lead anybody to liberation. not here not anywhere, period. we like to kill so we can live in access or not. we are not to be humbled. we are incongruous, and that’s how we got where we are. survival of the fittest or in our case, survival of the most callous. you see it in the children which bully and the emperor which slaughters. we annihilate our food, punish the weak for being inferior. demean those who don’t feel the need to. we stand on top of the motionless bodies of the hunted. if they could they would to the same, and we know that. nils mik
2016
pilze
A forest in the eastern Waldviertel. No one, far and wide. The soil is dried out from a long, arid summer. From time to time a few drops fall down from the sky onto the trees. And then, when there is a gust of wind, a few drops fall down onto the forest floor. A few mushrooms have developed their fruit and this is unmistakable. White or yellow, green or white, brown, violet, black, any color, any shape, edible, inedible, toxic they are. I am carefully moving and keep my distance to them creatures . Except for the boleti, I want them. I'll take it with me. To dry them, good and perhaps too intense odors in the house, maggots that crawl around and die on the dry carpet. I see the fungus' stalk and the caps through the viewfinder of my camera, on the display however. I forget that the mushrooms are real, that I can touch them, may harvest the fruit. A wonderful wide-angle lens takes me away from the nature I am pausing in. I immediately find and lose it again and again. And then I dismantle my tripods and find myself remaining on the forest floor again. In the meantime it was able to indulge a little with the help of some lost teardrops.
2019
norden
North. The legends that move away from the earth. Off the spirit that has been and is returning. You return to humanity yourself, and learn a lot. We from the time that quickly consumes itself. The images of the past are not left by nature, as the days' fade. In high summer, autumn comes down to earth. The spirit of showers can be found in the sky. A lot has ended in a short time. The farmer who showed himself on the plow. He sees the year drawing to a happy end. In such pictures man's day is completed. The earth's round decorated with rocks. Ain't like the cloud that gets lost in the evening. It shows up with a golden day. And perfection is without complaint.
2019
entering a dream
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody nobody. No one sleeps. The creatures of the moon smell and haunt their huts. Live rivers will come to bite men who don't dream and he who runs away with a broken heart will find corners, the incredible crocodile still under the tender protest of the stars. No one sleeps in the world. Nobody nobody. No one sleeps. There is a dead man in the farthest cemetery who complains three years because it has a dry landscape on the knee; and the boy they buried this morning was crying so much that there was a need to call the dogs to be quiet. Life is not a dream. Alert! Alert! Alert! We fall down the stairs to eat the damp earth or we climb the edge of the snow with the choir of dead dahlias. But there is no forgetting, no dream: raw meat. Kisses tie mouths in a tangle of recent veins and the one who hurts his pain will hurt without rest and he who fears death will carry it on his shoulders. One day the horses will live in the taverns and the angry ants. They will attack the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of the cows. Another day we will see the resurrection of the stuffed butterflies. And still walking through a landscape of gray sponges and dumb ships, we will see our ring shine a light and roses flow from our tongue. Alert! Alert! Alert! To those who still keep tracks of paw and downpour, to that boy who cries because he doesn't know the invention of the bridge or that dead man who only has a head and a shoe, they must be taken to the wall where rivers and serpents wait, where the wolves's teeth wait, where the child's mummified hand waits and the camel's skin bristles with a violent blue chill. Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody nobody. No one sleeps. But if someone closes their eyes, spank him, my children, spank him! There is a panorama of open eyes and bitter burning sores. No one sleeps in the world. Nobody nobody. I said it already. No one sleeps. But if someone has excess moss on their temples at night, open the hatches to see under the moon the false glasses, the poison and the skull of the theaters.
2016 - 2019
jacket from africa (to stay politically correct)
Lilja, born in Sweden, wears a jacket which David Burn could have worn when Annie Leibovitz photographed him and Nils Jonas, born in the heart of Vienna, an 'echter Wiener', wears the same jacket and this reminds us to the feeble-minded former vice director of a large Viennese museum, whose trashy photos we once satirized and who therefore threatened us with a lawsuit. We say 'Negersakko' because it looks like one, but it was painted by Ginger-Lily, then still small, with wall paint, dispersion we say.
2017
sonnenblumen mais wein
I stroll through the hilly landscape in the southeastern Weinviertel. It is autumn, the grapes are being harvested or have already been pressed. In between, someone has grown sunflowers. The plants are already dry. When I move between them, I make hard, scratchy noises. The soil is arid. In the midst of the juicy abundance of wine, a completely opposite world has emerged here. The natural way. I stand still. There is no wind to be felt. The sunflowers give off a variety of smells and my eyes fall on fallen fruit stalks. A mouse searches for space. The grape harvest is in progress, on the other side of the path. I am looking. I'm amazed. I behold, I face life's cycle. Smell and feel. Autumn, life. The life.
2019
apokalypse rajapakse
These photos were taken a year and a half after Mahinda Rajapaksa's resignation. I was busy in Colombo and took the train. I instinctively switched the camera to electronic shutter. Everything I had in connection with the Rajapaksa presidency looked here through the viewfinder and fell straight out of the picture. The country needs stability, I thought to myself. Every country needs it. Every person. Rolling shutter effect. Skew: The image bends diagonally in one direction or another as the camera or subject moves from one side to another, exposing different parts of the image at different times. Skew is a minor manifestation of the wobble phenomenon.
2016
I am making a photo
At one point, perhaps immediately after my 250,000th photo, I instantly and completely lost my sense for the meaning of photography. On the other hand, I still enjoyed traveling with the cameras and tripods. That keeps you fit, halfway through this nonsense. Before that happened, I had the idea of taking photos of a camera that had just snapped a shot. It was soon boring again, exhausted. So I positioned myself amidst the photo. I don't know what to do next. Ennui chimes its bells.
2019
I am getting older
Adobe Lightroom regularly introduces new sliders for even more nifty image editing. On one of these occasions, I experimentally pushed values to light heights. An amazing effect came about. The camera obviously has a higher resolution than my nearsighted eye. My skin had aged for decades since I last paid attention to it. I had become an old man with his forearm protecting his young camera from the intense light of the autumn sun.
2019
das bild zeigt das bild selber als abwesendes - norden
The picture shows the picture itself as absent. A wonderful cold autumn morning. I just want to have a wonderful autumn morning every day. This I guess as long as I'm in the car. Then I get out and notice that I am not dressed warm enough on this wonderful cold autumn day and wish for a warm, pleasant summer morning. But it is autumn, I can already see that in the fruits that are in the fields and in the fields that have nothing left but structured mould. All and everything is already prepared for the time of doing nothing. I myself, I notice, do not live by nature at all.
2019
das bild zeigt das bild selber als abwesendes - manhartsbrunn
The picture shows the picture itself as absent. If I have four cameras available, all of which either have exactly the same or a comparably good imaging performance, I can easily map the principle of the absent. Complete nonsense, actually. But then everything that Mr. Heidegger wrote and said would be complete nonsense. I don't know why I think of Mr. Heidegger just now.
2019
das bild zeigt das bild selber als abwesendes - enzersfeld
The picture shows the picture itself as absent. I cross some vineyards. The fruits are harvested and I recognize the intense smell of once frozen grapes. It smells like a wine cellar. It smells of fermented grapes. The living wealth has withdrawn. I start the way back, it's time.
2019
dbzdbsaa - mistelbach
The picture shows the picture itself as absent. I got a preparation from my mom to strengthen my scalp hair today. Bio-H-Tin. I think it will work.
2019
dry grass and agriculture
The picture shows the picture itself as absent. I've been living in the same village on the outskirts of the big city for three decades. A wide variety of landscapes extend to the north and west. Riparian forests, hilly landscapes, agricultural areas, oak forests, vineyards, dry grasslands and even small valleys between steep hills. It has taken me almost every thirty years to notice the beauty of my living environment. And now I'm exploring path after path, hill after hill, forest after forest, field after field.
2018
I like the muslims and the muslims like me
I like the Muslims and the Muslims like me. A few years ago I bought a Thobe and a Topi in Dargha Town, a Muslim-dominated merchant city in western Sri Lanka. For three years I always had the two items of clothing with me when I was out with the camera. In different places, in many different countries, I changed clothes and wore these traditional clothes barefooted. A wonderful feeling when it wasn't snowing.
2016-2019
the mapplethorpe files
Three decades ago I saw a photo by the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I was paralyzed. An unconditional directness focused me and never let go. I bought a nice book and found pictures that completely overwhelmed me. Bare skin, black and white, penises, muscles, extraordinary people with unmistakable peculiarities, self-portraits that reminded me of my own experiences. As usual, I started making covers of these images. My personal method of approaching another artist. For understandable reasons, I am not showing these photos here. A short time ago I took up the method again for a short time.
2019
peering at structured mess
Staring or peering at structured mess. The first time I noticed the confusion was in the southwestern Weinviertel. There I visited a Bronze Age burial mound near the village of Großmugl. Honest Christians had planted the emblem of the Christians on this pagan tomb. There are fields around this confusing area. I was standing on a dirt track and was amazed at this jumble of cultures and nature. The camera was mounted on a tripod behind me and I took this random arrangement for granted. The first picture of a series was created, which became interesting to me over several years.
2016 - 2020
Marco Island
I would never have traveled to the United States of America again in my life. I was too afraid of shuffling across the floor dressed in orange prison clothing and falling into despair because of a misunderstanding.
Then two dear friends invited me to recuperate in the far south of Florida. I can't remember ever being as relaxed as I was on the beaches of this waterfront community.
2020
observing string vibrations
The knowledge I gained from this series was not scientific. I remember well the sound of the cello, the concentration that hung in the room. Due to my proximity to the instrument, I could literally see the spruce body deform under the sound pressure. An additional satisfaction was that all three directions of vibration became visible on the picture.
2018
dissenting the ocean
If the sea attacks the beach and takes what it wants to take, especially here, where a giant wave took life and caused suffering, then we take this as an opportunity to use a poem to shout our opinion against this water appearing entirely detached.
2017
avoid being ruthless
Most people I meet personally make a compassionate impression on me. I can't really accuse people on the subway and on the street of being ruthless because I don't know them. But some of them turn out to be reckless again and again. Especially in times when they are under pressure. (Whatever they feel as "pressure") I have photographed special portraits of people who have made themselves known to me because of the lack of elbow technique.
2017
custumes in hell
In the extreme southwest of the island of Sri Lanka there are the buildings of a former sewing workshop in the Wathuregama district of Ahungalla. Operations did not resume after the tsunami in 2004. The two houses have been decaying since then. An Austrian artist who spent 3 months in Wathuregama discovered it for himself and intervened there with three paint pots. I intervened there three years later with European theater costumes and a camera.
2016
visible civilisation
Every civilization is visible. Civilization can be recognized by the smallest features. Even if a civilization has been extinct for a long time, we can see from the plane the discoloration of the grain above its remains under the earth. Sometimes I particularly notice our current civilization. Often in the great outdoors, sometimes in a city or on a construction site. There may be special shapes, peculiar shades of color, unusual shadows. Overall, I don't know what I notice in particular. Maybe I just take a few more photos.
2016 - 2020
fence against the tschinamann and his plastic waste
In Sri Lanka, the economic power of the Chinese has become very visible and tangible in the past ten years. When a new highway is built, it is financed from China and constructed by Chinese engineers. Hotels are built by Chinese workers. Interim loans are made through Tianjin, Shanghai or Xi'an. And ultimately I had the impression that the plastic waste that is washed up in large quantities on the beach every day came from Chinese merchant ships that are constantly visible off the coast. In Ahungalla, like everywhere on the coast of Sri Lanka, brooms are largely made from natural materials. I built a fence out of it.
2016
remove people's alienation
A book is not a weapon. A rifle, on the other hand, is one of them. An automatic weapon is of course a more effective weapon than a semi-automatic one. A book on the illusion of equal opportunities on the other hand may be a less practical book than one on the more or less elegantly used codes of the different social classes (which, by the way, cannot stand each other at all).
2018
si vis vitam para mortem
If you want to keep peace, prepare for war. This saying no longer seemed up-to-date to Freud, he changed it to - if you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death. In 1984 I found the skull of a child who lived near the Carnuntum military camp in the Middle Ages. I am thinking of my father.
2018
iz novigrada
Novigrad in autumn is an interesting experience. It's a largely depressing experience. If I hadn't stayed in the best room in the best hotel in town, I would have been sad and drunk after a few hours.So I was only drunk after a day and could hardly bear the sadness. But ultimately there were completely different reasons. After all, that's part of life.
2019
stronger next generation
bigger, stronger, faster. there is a certain trend in people’s physical development. the slightly above average male nowadays looks like a romans time viking. we are turning into more robust individuals, so it seems. we should be stronger as generations fade, and new ones rise. but the further we advance, the less struggle is presence, and the less suffer is directionally proportional to less strength to overcome said obstacles. we look stronger, move faster, jump higher and have better access to every bit of information, but evolution won’t offer real toughness, not by itself. no endurance no “sucking it up”. everybody feels bad for everybody else, just a bunch of weaklings talking a lot, when they really should have their tales between their legs until they experience what our fathers and mothers partially had to fight with. growth has an element of simplicity. for muscles to grow, there needs to be a struggle with resistance, until you overcome it. same goes for mental strength, in theory it is so easy and logical, like everything else worth doing and being in our lifetimes. endure and beat real cold, pain, struggle and everything else which sharpens a body and mind. It’s not survival of the seemingly fittest. there are a lot of people that have come up with struggle and are still struggling as they grow to be adults, but they often don’t have a spot in this society, because people feel intimidated, by the ability to take what they want. it goes against the rules. people call them degenerates and criminals. but if this is the direction humans are moving in, I don’t know if I want to evolve.
slippers and
Slippers, slippers and related shoe clothing are maximally repulsive for me. There is not a single beautiful model worldwide. They are all ugly. If they are worn for a few days or longer, a patina inscribes on the foot surface. Then hopefully not even the owner wants to see them anymore. If I were a dictator, I would ban slippers. I would make wearing slippers a punishable offense.
2018
seen through a lens of my camera
For a short time we can see what we have photographed as it was just photographed. Then we hide the result of this process and turn to a new subject. At the end of the day, when we look at what we have photographed, we see something else, because we work with a memory and put it over the photo. A photo from the first moment cannot convert this process either.
2018 - 2019
fence against the tschinamann
In Sri Lanka, the economic power of the Chinese has become very visible and tangible in the past ten years. When a new highway is built, it is financed from China and constructed by Chinese engineers. Hotels are built by Chinese workers. Interim loans are made through Tianjin, Shanghai or Xi'an. And ultimately I had the impression that the plastic waste that is washed up in large quantities on the beach every day came from Chinese merchant ships that are constantly visible off the coast.In Ahungalla, like everywhere on the coast of Sri Lanka, the palm trees are completely recycled in the most sustainable way. Dead parts as well as all parts of felled specimens. I used these biodegradable building materials to build a fence against the Chinese.
2017
a forest in the still of an evening
Once I was in a hotel in the northern Waldviertel on the border with the Czech Republic for several weeks. My pelvic bones were repaired there. I used the evenings around Christmas to see the forest at dusk and in complete darkness.
2019
citation
Go and tell John again what you see and hear: the blind see and the lame go, the leper become pure and the deaf hear, the dead stand up and the gospel is preached to the poor; and blessed is he who is not annoyed with me.
2017
new shirt
Sometimes it happens, as if by chance, that one gray fits the other and the one fabric to the other. And the drape of one garment fits the other. The camera turns the colors of the skin into shades of gray. And we enjoy it when we can see that.
2016
my finger in the pie
There are currently 10 to the 14th photos on the Internet. 10 to the 9th of them are excellent. Probably 10 to the 7th of these photos are really brilliant. Who knows. By the way it is irrelevant. That's why I assume that a landscape photo that I take already has hundreds of very good or better ones. So that's generally uninteresting. However, if I put my hand in one place in the picture, it becomes unique.
2017 - 2020
time flies
In late winter of 2018, I crossed a mountain range near the Dalmatian coast, sitting in a small machine - I spotted the Dinaric Mountains. And suddenly I noticed that time flies very quickly. I took your hand in mine.
2018 - 2020
creativity in a profanatory context
For me, the locus creaturae is generally a place that has been specially created for a creative process or has grown so that it immediately makes me think of creativity and production. It was like this when I visited artists in their studios with my parents and writers in their homes. Today we are increasingly confronted with the fact that creativity is practiced in extremely banal places. Because the respective place is just well suited. Because it may convey privacy, concentration, or seclusion.
2018
nebel auwald
For many years, I was terrified to meet a deer in the forest. At the same time, the forest magically attracted me with its smells, noises and haptic experiences. It wasn't allowed to pass three weeks without me entering a forest. Otherwise I would be missing something. One day, early in the morning in the floodplain forest, the wind blew favorably for me, I looked at the eyes of a deer family at a crossroads up close. The deer was obviously considering what was best to do next. It was as if he were instructing the subadults to go out first, then the hind. And finally, this confident, huge animal moved away from me with the elegance of the dominant being. But also a little sad. I do not know either. I happened to cross their path a little later and found time to take a single photo.
2019
ein schirm am abend
An evening in autumn. Fields preparing for the harvest. A blue umbrella along the way. It rained briefly. The world made a perfectly reasonable impression on me. I could put the umbrella away, take a picture and drive home.
2017
bergfruehling
An exercise in inaudible and invisible photography at the Austrian Ossiachersee.
2018
underpants left behind
A project that is far from over is leaving panties in places where it was initially sufficient that they were beautiful. After that I immediately had the inspiration to leave my underpants in places defined by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The fun ends when it comes to underpants. There is a hard limit to be drawn.
2018 - 2020
I like the muslims and the muslims like me
Jetzt kommt das nochmals: I like the Muslims and the Muslims like me. A few years ago I bought a Thobe and a Topi in Dargha Town, a Muslim-dominated merchant city in western Sri Lanka. For three years I always had the two items of clothing with me when I was out with the camera. In different places, in many different countries, I changed clothes and wore these traditional clothes barefooted. A wonderful feeling when it wasn't snowing.
2017 - 2020
stone island may possibly be ideological
Clothes that we pay attention to tend to be placed politically on the left or right. Or the design is completely uninspired so that this idea does not occur to us at all. I like Stone Island, which I got to know from my son. The advertising for this works with young people who immediately remind one of the members of the master race. Interestingly, even if they're black or Mongolian. The giants never smile. The symbolism is largely inspired by the military. I do not mind that. I don't think about it any further or just a step further.
2018
final resting place
In 1980, an ocelot is sneakily caught and killed in the jungle east of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, to sell its fur to tourists. I am one of these tourists. The fur then lies senselessly for nearly four decades in my apartment. Finally, clothes moths attack the fur and destroy it. However, I can not bring the fur to bury and so it is now on the surface of a mound to become soil.Every day I visit it with a bad conscience.
running away from
I rarely run away from anything. I usually wait. Then running away is usually not necessary. And yet I can't help but take this series of photos for some time and for some time. I would like to know what I'm running away from in these photos.
2018 - 2020
creativity in a profanatory context
Creativity, it seems to me, should ideally always take place in a special surrounding that is particularly suitable for it. As being a place with a special calm. Or a place with special order. Or a place with special proportions. Or a place with special light. Or a place with special emptiness. Or a place with a lot of confusion. My son Nils and I tried out whether creativity can also take place in a particularly banal, unsensitized environment.
2018
hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus
Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus is a fungus that kills the shoots of the ash. So it is said to be. That is why in the past three years innumerable flawless trees have been felled in the meadows in my living environment. In addition, the riparian forests around my place of residence were now closed to visitors. It was suggested that there was a risk of falling trees or falling branches. I have no idea what was really going on. I have been to the floodplain countless times and I have never witnessed any of these dangers.
2017
average year
A short series of photographs dealt with years. Years written on a landmark. Year numbers known in connection with a building. Other years. Average years. Every year is average. However, what happened in that particular year can be anything but average.
2017
light!
Many years ago I owned a Leica M6. A wonderful camera, perhaps the most wonderful 35mm camera ever. However, my model had a small defect, sometimes light came in from somewhere and damaged some of my photos. That would have been repairable. I never had it repaired. And today I'm also happy when light penetrates through lens caps or between curtains. I like penetrating light. This can take many forms.
2017
planes everywhere
Basically, this series should have been called "plains everywhere". Because on the mountain, which I climbed with charming company that day, there were plains everywhere. Those were formed by depressions filled with snow. On the other hand, I particularly noticed the number of airplanes that made their way across the sky that day. Airplanes everywhere.
2018
southern market
One day we got out of the bus in Dharga Town, in the far southwest of the island of Sri Lanka. Or from the tuktuk. We had identified a market and wanted to visit it. The village is a practically purely Muslim community of traders. Everything here is breathtaking. Trading is quick and determined, from both sides. The nose gets countless impressions, the ear too and the eyes too. And when you're gone, from Dharga Town, it's good too.
2017
we are a smoking family
cigarettes and coffee
suicide for pleasure. inhaling certain uncertainty. every breath
gets shorter. but something is in motion, shifting control to a substance,
to a feeling, a relief, or just a few moments in the cold,
fueled with solitude. maybe just a distraction from minor or major
struggle. giving the possibility to be approached by someone who
struggles with the exactly same and different things. self-loathe,
subconscious consciousness about the fact that you don’t really
want to be here. a decision turns into a habit. a human habit, selfdestruction.
I tell myself that it’s for creative reasons or to let off
steam. when in the end, I only want to feel the smoke pour into
my eyes my throat and look at it fade through the dimmed lights
and moonshine. nils mik
to and from traunfeld on a chilly winter afternoon
I haven't been hungry for years. I haven't really been cold for years. I may not feel anything anymore. Maybe I've grown older. Or just a few physical and social framework conditions have changed.
2017
route 3
If you get out of your car in the village of Mistelbach and walk a little through the vineyards, you will discover how easy life can be. However, small forests quickly appear and in these you can discover the predominance of the acacia. This spreads everywhere where oaks used to be. The oak is an impressive, powerful hardwood tree. The acacia, on the other hand, does not grow very large and its wood cannot match that of the oak. And life is back on its usual difficult path. And then somehow there is also a small red car parked there.
2019
piran
When you step onto the bottom of the Istrian peninsula, one of the first places you come through is the small coastal town of Piran. I've been there many times and I'm wondering why. It is a beautiful, small, humble city with a long history. Formerly a vacation destination for wealthy citizens of the K.u.K. Monarchy, today a meeting point for the plebs from Ljubljana, Zagreb and Vienna. Hardly anyone here is wealthy. There are people with presumably conventional biographies who sit here in the cafe and look out to sea. Mostly in summer. But I come in winter and spring and autumn. Because the plebs should also be here in these seasons and enjoy the salty sea air.
2017
with my fur in winter
When my friend Karl Erwin Lichtenecker, who had unfortunately passed away, gave me a fur-lined coat from his recently deceased cousin a few years ago, I was reminded of my grandfather Josef Nachtnebel, who died 40 years ago. He always wore one of these warm coats in winter. The hair on my head has been thinning and falling off for several years. It is a memory of both old gentlemen. So I'm already becoming one. Very slowly but surely. For some time now I have been photographing myself from behind in this warm fur collar coat. Then I'm three older men at the same time.
2017
mik eisenberger gelitin
A few years ago, the Austrian artist Christian Eisenberger intervened in the sand on the beach of Ahungalla, with an armchair and a metal form of the letter E. Several years earlier, the Austrian artist collective Gelitin dug fairly deep holes into the beach of Coney Island. Under the title "The Dig Cunt". I now combined both works and chose the beach of Ahungalla. That was the most obvious thing for me at that time.
2016
bisamberg till dusk
At irregular intervals I think about the meaningfulness of photography. I never come to a satisfactory result. Then dawn starts to interest me. The end of twilight when you can no longer see well, but the camera continues to deliver razor-sharp images. In these moments, the camera sees a lot more than we humans do. Then it seems that photography continues to make sense.
2017
balding sports
My hair on my head is getting thinner and thinner. There is an increasing clearing on top of my head. For some time I have been washing my hair with the Plantur39 shampoo. It should give the hair strength again and tightness in growth. And recently I have been taking Bio-H-Tin, a medication that is said to work wonders. My mom bought me the starter set. In the pharmacy, despite the ban on going out due to CoVid19. That is very nice of her. It makes me a little uncomfortable that she is in danger because of my thinning hair.
2017
eastern weinviertel till dusk
Sometimes I find the twilight in the Weinviertel soothing and good. And I want to be in the protective four walls again soon.
2017
mus musculus
My son Nils Jonas is an exceptionally strong person in several ways. At the same time, he is unusually sensitive to the diversity and richness of life. I wanted to show all of this in a single photo.
2016
what if this famous chinese 20th century ...
artist was simply his own reincarnation
2016
the world is changing
exactly 60 years after people from hungary fled to austria at accurately this place, native hungarians, employees of a Bavarian car manufacturer, undertake a company outing without recognizing the coincidence.
2016