The City: Optical Adventure
Christian Ruhm turns typical architectural photography on its head. By ingeniously overlapping different points of view, which appear to us like visions, he provokes our curiosity about places we thought to be familiar. But through the lens of his camera, the familiar suddenly looks entirely new and unfamiliar: turned, truncated, a steep view from below, and all of these layered upon one another. The perfect perspective, such as a veduta of a city – what has always possessed artists and photographers – Ruhm interprets anew and unconventionally.
His artistic interpretation begins with the search for an adequate and contemporary representation of a modern metropolis. What do we perceive in a city today when its image is so constantly and rapidly changing? Familiar city landmarks – monoliths that assert themselves among the complexity of the built environment – offer him orientation. And yet, in our hectic everyday lives, even these are often only fleetingly appreciated.
Ruhm’s new perspectives recall neither postcard, nor vacation photo, nor traditional architectural details. His work is no less than a little revolution of orientation; he trains our eyes, indeed provokes them to take stock anew and with multiple views, which he masterfully combines, to find a new perspective.
He is an inventor, an explorer, and a photographer unafraid of experimenting with new definitions of our view of things. He titles his series from Berlin and New York Landmarks, and yet with the help of these images we are able to see these two cities with completely different eyes.
Are the movements that look like slight trembles in his photographic images generated with a confident gesture of the hand? Ruhm likes to pose his viewers with riddles and ultimately to show how architecture, indeed city photography, can be newly defined. He sharpens our view, otherwise content to glide past the well-known silhouettes and streets, and focuses our gaze on a single building. More precisely, he turns our attention to the pinnacle or head of a tall landmark that has made a life-lasting impression on us.
| 1967 | Born in Berlin,Germany |
| 1975 | First photographs |
| 1989-91 | Photography training |
| 1996-98 | Meisterschule Potsdam Babelsberg |
| 1999-2002 | Co-founders / Partner of the “licht gestalten” Fotostudio GmbH with Uli Staiger |
| 1999-2008 | Various music projects |
| 2005-2008 | Various art and multimedia projects |
| seit 2008 | Exclusively photographic art projects and series |
seit 2002 | Freelance photo artist |
| lives and works in Berlin, Germany |
LINKS
cr02.net
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