A crow, mistletoe in wintery trees, an abandoned petrol station, ACAB, “Magreth’s Café”, the café “Bombon”, the café/lounge/dance bar “Monte Cito”, graffiti with the trickled words “Liebe! Liebe!” (Love! Love!), industrial buildings, a riverbank, an SK Sturm scarf on the rear shelf of a blue Peugeot 106 XR, torn posters, streets and sidewalks and pathways interspersed throughout, playgrounds, barrier tape, balconies, violet, with artificial sunflowers, shadows on sidewalks, meadows, gates, backyards, “Tyre Fitting on Saturdays!”, the “Aquarium”, and everything begins with the view of a family from behind, walking down the middle of a side street—going where?

Triester. 12 books with photographs of the eponymous settlement in the Graz district of Gries by Martin Behr and Martin Osterider have been published since 2013, and others are in planning. The concept of a sustained, open-ended documentation, which elude any claim to authenticity and avoids any interpretation, a thread of meaning in images that counter their summarization. Triester thus poses the question as to which images can perhaps not exist, and what then happens in the interstitial realms of the images, outside of the images, and from one image to another one. Are not images called for that do not take themselves so seriously? Is there not already too much of the special, too much reality, or what considers itself to be such? Are not images necessary which, instead of not trying to convince us of something or not trying to capture reality, actually aim to open up this reality for us, to make it accessible, images which allow us to conjecture new possible meanings for this reality?

Parallel to a billboard offered to us by the Ankünder company, the presentation will take place at Camera Austria, including the newly published volume number 12 from the Triester series and a poster available at the presentation.

Hans Hansen is widely considered to be one of the most important creators of product and still-life photography. His pictorial language evolved through a quest for simplification and by toying with form and alienation, usually based on his experiments with light. By using reduction and liberating objects from their contexts of origin, Hansen has succeeded in imbuing the photographic image with a sense of autonomy that references questions of representation extending far beyond the field of so-called product photography. It is for this reason in particular that the work of Hansen remains a recurring point of reference for a younger generation of artists who primarily move within the realm of photography. The exhibition was initiated by artist Annette Kelm and designer Hendrik Schwantes and was put together in collaboration with  Hansen. It shows a subjective cross-section from his long-standing photographic practice—intermingling freelance projects and commissioned works. Therefore, the exhibition at Camera Austria thematizes the junctions between free and applied photography. “Atelier” introduces the work of an applied photographer who transcends the conventions and purported boundaries of applied photography by developing his own pictorial language and by integrating diverse influences from the visual arts and design. The exhibition the first solo presentation of Hans Hansen in Austria.