PUBLISHER
Hatje Cantz

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 12.75 x 11.25 in. / 180 pgs / 155 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date 9/30/2011
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 99

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783775728263 TRADE
List Price: $85.00 CDN $100.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

TERRITORY
NA LA

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Weimar, Germany
Neues Museum, 04/08/11-06/13/11

Erfurt, Germany
Angermuseum, 04/09/11-06/05/11

Duisburg, Germany
Museum Küppersmühle, 07/01/11-10/03/11

THE SPRING 2024 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

Preview our Spring 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.

Hans-Christian Schink

Text by Ulrike Bestgen, Matthias Flügge, Antje Rávic Strubel, Thomas Weski.

With his photographs of telephone cables rigged in an otherwise pristine Vietnamese jungle, or utility poles and wires strung across Niigata's snowy landscape, Leipzig-based photographer Hans-Christian Schink (born 1961) has documented the clash between civilization and nature for over three decades, exerting a major influence on the German photographic scene. He first garnered attention for his series Verkehrsprojekte Deutsche Einheit, for which he spent seven years documenting new traffic-related constructions in eastern Germany. Regardless of location, Schink's images bear testimony to humankind's brutal inscriptions upon the environment--damage to which they draw particular attention through the careful omission of human presence. Schink's avoidance of more overtly critical content only further intensifies the memorability of his photographs. This publication surveys the artist's work from 1980 to the present day.

Featured image, Bollensdorf, 1997, is reproduced from Hans-Christian Schink, in which Thomas Weski writes, "Let us linger in front of one photograph before unveiling context and associations. The date, title of the picture (Bollensdorf), and the name of the series (Fläming) all indicate that Hans-Christian Schink photographed the small town of Bollensdorf, Brandenburg, in 1997. he did not, however, take pictures of the old half-timbered church or the town's historic core; instead, he chose an ordinary, completely unspectacular object. The color photograph shows a row of six houses beneath a cloudy sky. Lined up on one side of the street, the buildings are seen from the front. To take this picture, the photographer used a large-format camera that can only be operated with the help of a tripod. The sheet film only allows for a small number of pictures--perhaps only one because the material is expensive. Once the image has been composed in the viewfinder, where it appears upside down, and the film holder has been inserted and is ready for exposure, then the photographer stands next his camera and waits for the proper moment to release the shutter. Waiting for all factors to coincide, biding time patiently until all the elements are aligned in a relationship conducive to photography--this is the foundation for a photograph whose quality can sustain fascination."

STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

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FROM THE BOOK

"Schink's artistic approach is supported by his conviction that the authenticity of a photograph should not be doubted. His impartial view characterizes not only the pictures of the eastern German regions familiar to him, but also his very specific perception of foreign topographies, regardless of whether they are urban landscapes, apparently untouched by nature, or a pulsating city seen by night. Austere in form, yet elegantly aesthetic at the same time, Schink's large photographs register extraordinarily different changes in the relationship between culture and nature in architectural structures or in the various stages of civilization's influence on remote landscapes. In the process, his photographs bear lasting witness to the realization of profound, gradual changes."

Wolfgang Holler and Walter Smerling, excerpted from the foreword to Hans-Christian Schink.

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