Still Untitled
Still lifes metaphorically show the transitoriness and the man-made interventions and changes of fate. Brigitte Lustenberger has been dealing with the theme of transience for some time now - on several levels. On the one hand, there is the selection, the staging, the observation of the 'passing and withering' of objects and the photographing, the capturing on negative, which is equivalent to the pausing of a moment. Thus Lustenberger reflects on life and death, our transience - and works against it by trying to counteract decay (in a photographic way).
On the other hand, she intensively explores the medium of photography. Photography seems to stop transience, because it captures moments and seems to snatch them away from transience. But these captured moments are ultimately only representations of the past - a (supposed) imprint of an object or an event. It is therefore easy to understand that all her photographs are created in an analogous manner (negative and photographic print). The light leaves an 'imprint' on the negative, which is then left on photographic paper by a light source. In digital photography, the light still draws on the digital chip, but as soon as the image is further processed, it is translated into binary codes and the visible trace of the light disappears in zeros and ones.
She works primarily with existing light, i.e. she worked only with window light. The exposure times are often very long, between a quarter of a second and several minutes. This results in a fine light that brings the subjects out of the dark: the light draws and paints - a homage to analogue photography. The process of leaving traces on the negative thus becomes an intense experience in itself.
