June 1
Constanze Flamme      
Troubled Water     

How to be present in front of a photograph.

I first saw the photographs of Constanze Flamme on my computer. But I could not really see them until we met at the gallery. It was quiet there and the quiet of the room drew out the quiet from within the images. The horizon ran out of one photograph and into the next and the next. The horizon was like a stage on which events, human and natural, occurred. Or it was like an ongoing rhythm or tone over which a melody played and then ended. These natural and human events occurred in the frame of one photograph and then disappeared in the next, replaced by an event or image that recalled the one before it with a kind of visual rhyme or resonance. These photographs did not merely document the aftermath of a certain event (The BP oil spill) that affected a certain place. This sequence of photographs made me think about the fragility of our bodies, our ancient dependence on water, and compared to waters and the world itself, the almost imperceptible duration of our lives here on earth.


EF