Cathedral of Light
Can the holdings of image archives or photography collections inspire new works of art? This question is the focus of the project 'Artist Meets Archive' (AMA) of the Internationale Photoszene Köln, within which Ola Kolehmainen has created the series 'Cathedral of Light'. In this series he deals with the duality of the photographic medium as a haptic object with its very own aesthetics on the one hand and as an information carrier on the other. He is doing this by using historical photographs from the Rheinisches Bildarchiv (RBA). ‘Cathedral of Light' shows new photographic artworks, in which Ola Kolehmainen processes sacred interiors and exteriors. The aspects of light, space and colour play a decisive role. He is particularly interested in the 'old light' and the interplay of light and space within the places that have been documented in photographs or drawings. He questions the historical space-light conditions and processes them using traditional and digital photographic techniques.