exposures

exposures, 2002 – 2003
series of 11, each c-print on alucobond.
exhibition: günther selichar— dominion of the screens, museum der moderne, salzburg 2022/23.

exposures, 2002 – 2003
series of 11, each c-print on alucobond.
exhibition: licht III — light qualities, fotogalerie wien, vienna 2016.

exposures, 2002 – 2003
series of 11, each c-print on alucobond.
exhibition: günther selichar — standby, kunstverein medienturm, graz 2006.

exposures, 2002 – 2003
series of 11, each c-print on alucobond.
exhibition: günther selichar — third eye, landesgalerie linz, 2004.

günther selichar, exposure a, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 97 cm, edition: 3, collection österreichische fotogalerie at the museum der moderne, salzburg.

günther selichar, exposure b, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 100 cm, edition: 3, spallart collection, salzburg.

günther selichar, exposure c, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 303 cm, edition: 3, collection nö. landessammlungen, st. pölten.

günther selichar, exposure d, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 95 cm, edition: 3.

günther selichar, exposure e, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 95 cm, edition: 3.

günther selichar, exposure f, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 191 cm, edition: 3, collection landesgalerie, linz.

günther selichar, exposure g, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 95 cm, edition: 3.

günther selichar, exposure h, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 95 cm, edition: 3, spallart collection, salzburg; private collection, vienna.

günther selichar, exposure i, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 179 cm, edition: 3. collection raiffeisenlandesbank oö, linz

günther selichar, exposure j, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 121 cm, edition: 3, collection österreichische fotogalerie at the museum der moderne, salzburg.

günther selichar, exposure k, 2002 – 2003, c-print/alucobond, 95 x 95 cm, edition: 3, private collection, vienna; collection „die kunstammlung des landes oberösterreich“, linz.

exposures, 2002 – 2003
series of 3, each ink-jet print in 6 shades of gray on hahnemühle photo rag 308 g, [a] 57 x 58 cm, [f] 57 x 114 cm, [j] 57 x 73 cm (image format), edition 2 + I + 1, private collection, vienna, bonn, i.a.

marie röbl

selichar’s most recent photo series entitled “exposures” is devoted to another component of devices or apparative installations of electronic image media: the lamps for illuminating/lighting the motifs or places selected for shooting pictures. these are frequently halogen lamps, such as those built into video or film cameras, camcorders or other recording devices. these light sources are photographed in color in an active, in other words illuminated state. here again, the apparatus context is not recognizable, because the adjacent, barely captured encasing sections appear only as a black outline in the glare of the light. thus the usually circular illuminants have the effect of being released or that of bright figures against a square, dark ground. what becomes visible here, in the sharpest possible focus, are the irregular, knot-like centers where the actual light source, the filaments are; in addition, there are valleys of shadow or gray-shaded areas around these centers, which spread out in astonishingly different forms on the spherically curved, glowing white reflectors. yet what comes into view – literally before anything else – are the surfaces of the transparent diffusion plates that cover the bulb as protection and diffuse the light shining through them through their irregularities. everything behind them in the photo appears to be filtered through them: slightly blurred or schematically dissolved, depending on how the surfaces of the plates are made (like looking into a bathroom through fluted glass). since the focus is adjusted exactly to the level of these diffusion plates, their own irregularities can sometimes also be recognized. a further variation of a collision of “media” (in multiple meanings of the term) thus becomes evident here.
aside from the appeal of the image aesthetics, in its interplay with the title the subject opens up numerous media-sociological and theoretical issues. the english term exposure covers a broad field of terminology, including the meanings: the act of subjecting someone to an influencing experience; abandoning without shelter or protection; presentation to view in an open or public manner; the act of exposing film to light; vulnerability to the elements; to the action of heat or cold or wind or rain; aspect re light or wind; the disclosure of something secret; the intensity of light falling on a photographic film or plate; the state of being vulnerable or exposed; a picture of a person or scene in the form of a print or transparent slide; recorded by a camera on light-sensitive material.⁵in this way, aggressive, confrontational and investigative aspects of mass media culture are addressed on the one hand, but a conscious and voluntary activity and its effects on the victim side are also expressed as well.⁶
on the other hand, the term also describes essential physical-chemical processes of photographic image production (and the media that depend on it). in a broader sense, the series “exposures” refers to the elementary basis of every pictorial representation or mediatization, because light is the precondition for visibility at the level of visual perception. as in “screens, cold” before, selichar targets a complex intersection of discourses and parameters in his work with an immediately comprehensible, everyday motif.
…thus it is precisely the excess of the factual, the enormous abundance of detail in his pictures, which allows a so faithful depiction to tip into the (autonomous, abstract) pictorialness of an artefact: through the perception of the painterly qualities of these pictures, their emptiness (of objects) opens up the experience of “repelling depth” (günther selichar), which can be read as a metaphor for the immediate insufficiency of mediatized reality: the gaze alone – regardless of how it is technologically enhanced – is not capable of deciphering the conditions and backgrounds of the media and their image cultures.

⁵ Quoted from the online dictionary collection “Onelook Dictionary Search”: http://www.onelook.com/?w=exposure&ls=a (November 2003). The dictionary of the Computer Science Department of the Technical University Munich (http://dict.leo.org/) lists a total of 91 different words in German corresponding to the English word “exposure”.
⁶ In a variation on Bruce Nauman’s observation that “people die of exposure”, Günther Selichar notes that it is equally true that “people die for exposure”.

from: marie röbl, „sources“, „screens“, „exposures“. günther selichar’s media analyses in the medium of photography, in: martin hochleitner (ed.), alexander horwath, marc ries, dieter ronte, marie röbl, birgit sonna: günther selichar. third eye. (linz | salzburg: oö.landesgalerie | fotohof edition 37, 2004).