ALIENATED NATURE

ROLF MÜHLEMANN

//Rolf grew up in Bern and has been living in Thun/Switzerland for a few years now. His photography habit began when he was a little boy. He enjoys experimenting with alienating the images he creates, and his favourite subjects are usually “imperfect” areas. With his process he creates different realities. We present his series of abstract black and white flower images.

“My first real camera was an analog Cosina SLR. But I also experimented with Polaroid, old roll film cameras and self-made pinhole cameras. With my own photo lab I soon came to black and white photography. I have always experimented with alienating the images (e.g. solarization). This desire to experiment has accompanied me in my photography to this day. It was also born out of necessity, since I was always missing a quantum of sharpness with my relatively simple and optically imperfect equipment”, Rolf says.

“Today, I rarely go out without a camera. The smartphone or at least the compact camera have largely replaced the larger cameras with interchangeable lenses. My favourite motifs are in the area of the “imperfect”: neglected buildings, graffiti, car graveyards.”

“Cloudless everyday you fall
Upon my waking eyes
Inviting and inciting me to rise
And through the window in the wall
Come streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

And no one sings me lullabies
And no one makes me close my eyes
And so I throw the windows wide
Callin’ you across the sky.”

Pink Floyd – Echoes

What draws you to the arts?

What do you like best about this project?

“For me, art is a strong expression of individual freedom and an important means of communication.”

“Flowers in black and white? What is actually missing here is what nature has created in its infinite splendor: the colour. And in spite of this, or precisely because of this, the pictures allow a different, less familiar view of the blossoms depicted. The shapes, the differences in brightness in the petals or in florescences suddenly become much more apparent.”

This series is rather atypical for Rolf and represents something like “back to the roots” for him. “The photos strongly remind me of my photographic beginnings in the photo lab. Although created using today’s digital technology, they could also have been made in a photo laboratory with appropriately graded paper or by means of solarization.”

“In the post-processing, which is the most important element of my (photo)graphic work, I try to create new realities with the images produced by the camera through double exposures or alienation in the image processing programmes, whereby I also try to work with the simplest possible means,” Rolf explains. “So the focus for me is more on composing than on photography.”

Click on the photos to see a larger image in original dimensions. Some images may be cropped for layout.