HORST & DANIEL ZIELSKE

ABOUT THE ARTIST

WORKS

ABOUT THE ARTIST

INTRODUCTION

GERMAN SYMPHONY “Nature is a petrified magical town...” the romantic poet Novalis once wrote. Horst (*1946) and Daniel (*1972) Zielske from Göttingen have been photographing together since 1993. Doesn’t it seem almost “romantic” – in a historical and artistic sense – when father and son go on a photographic journey through Germany? They have brought back photographs from the North Sea, Rügen, the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, and Eichsfeld – altogether encompassed under the title “German Symphony.” Their engaging intensity has also been directed towards chronicling the noise and novelty of today’s life. MEGALOPOLIS SHANGHAI As Westerners, how do we really understand what is going on in Shanghai, China? How should we comprehend the birth of a mega-city in such a sort span of time, we who still link urban development with notions like “Center”, “Downtown”, “Old Town”, “Piazza” or “Dome”? “Shanghai incorporates civilization in “fast motion”, phantasmagoria in steel and stone, the creation of a new city out of itself, constructed by one, two, three millions of migrant workers for fifteen, twenty, maybe thirty million people,” as German travel editor Jakob Strobel y Serra writes in the introduction to Zielske’s book with the Shanghai pictures.Perhaps we can guess what the people of Shanghai are living by listening to German composer’s Richard Strauss “Thus spoke Zarathustra”. In his symbolic interpretation of Nietzsche’s essay, Strauss lets us have a presentiment of the true dimensions of our existence. In the form of the famous enhancement, incorporating a sunrise, we feel the divine and the uncanny at the same time. Isn’t China the country where the sun rises? Yes, certainly, but if we follow the analogy to “Zarathustra”, we suddenly experience the dark and the light, desire and threat, lightness as well as the parallel existence of good and bad, the ever fractioning forces of nature and civilization.In more pragmatic words, father and son Zielske with their “camera-strokes” present to us an image of a Megalopolis; to westerners, the images relay the birth of a new economical mega-power. The Shanghai series shows us all the benefits, but also illuminates the price that such competitive growth brings to humans living daily life in this dream and nightmare. MODERN TURNER

Inspired by the English landscape painter William Turner (1775–1851), Horst and Daniel Zielske followed the Romantic visionary’s travels through eight European countries for four years. The work represents a continuation of their earlier work, the series German Symphony, which dealt intensively with the visual language of the German Romantics, in particular Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), whose haunting landscapes of the German Baltic Sea, the chalk cliffs of Rügen, and the Elbe Standstone Mountains continue to shape our image of the Romantic era.
Now, with the cycle Modern Turner, they turn their attention to one of Britain’s most famous painters. Tracking down the locations of his paintings, they look to find different, new perspectives on the cities, landscapes, and seascapes he captured in dramatic images. Today, these sometimes appear to the viewer changed through the additions of new buildings, streets, and means of transportation – but they develop their own singular allure through the Zielskes’ photographic view.

The father and son team oriented their 56 motifs on the “Master of Light”’s own perspective, simultaneously developing individual, location-specific tonalities of their own and thus representing a distinctive break with the paintings. In addition, they worked partially with analog and partially with digital technology, honing a contemporary visual language. The works of Modern Turner span the realms from documentary to the Romantic spirit of the nineteenth century. The Zielskes plan to cap the project, launched in 2007, with a presentation of their book.