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Interview • 112 PH

Johann Husser, Proposal for a city

Dresden, Germany

Please introduce yourself—what is your name, where are you from, what do you do?

My name is Johann Husser, I was born in Kemerovo, Siberia, but grew up and live in Germany. I am an artist and freelance photographer currently living in Dresden.

What is your relationship with photography, and how did you get into it?

I use the camera to try to understand certain topics better/differently.

What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?

A mix of both.

What is the story you want your pictures to tell?

I don't want any particular story to be told. I think there are different ways to read images, or at least this is how I would like to understand it. I can give a context in which my projects are made and also I as a person provide a certain context, but the viewers should also be able to associate and incorporate their background in reading the images.

Which city would you like to visit the most, and why?

Kemerovo. Haven´t been there since we moved, when i was roughly 4 years old. I am curious how I would react to the place I was born and wether the fragmented memories I have would trigger something.

What is your personal relationship to cities, and how do you perceive them as places in general?

They shape me. And are a container of information, history and posssible futures.

Regarding your project Proposal for a city: What was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?

I have always been interested in the construction and deconstruction of cities. Having a background in spatial planning, this is something that regularly reoccurs in my artistic practice and research. Facades, architectural materials and advertising banners articulate urban past and present, but also a future yet to be built.

In my work I deal with aspects of urban development, to what extent, and if at all, a photographic examination of the subject must relate to truth and reality, and how a fragmentary dialogue can shape a visual idea. Places of de-/ construction form a visual focus of my work and are documented analogue as well as digitally and are digitally altered in further practice.

Deconstruction as process is transferred into the image-space in order to question aspects of the documentary and to place it in dialogue with subjective perception. I consciously use algorithmic tools within editing programs and their errors to process the works. There is an intervention in the depicted space, obviously, partially and at times minimal.

In relation to the the open building structures of the conversion and new constructions the process of editing is disclosed and thus part of the presentation. 3D representations on construction posters and advertisements of buildings under construction constitute another focal point. Rendered people inhabit the representations of a future space.

Even before the building is completed and the building is occupied, potential tenants are addressed and represented. Predominantly white, heteronormative and in conservative role structures. By photographing the renderings and reworking them using digital algorithms and their failures, the images and represented ideas and ideologies are visually deconstructed and questioned.

Presented in contrast to my black and white photographs, showing sections and collages of urban buildings, I propose the idea of a city in transition.

Which project did you never finish?

Proposal for a memory.

If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?

Don't overthink it.

What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?

Heads: take, tails: make… it's tails.

If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?

A florist or book binder.

How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?

I would put on Ultra by Disappears.

What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?

Proposal for a city still keeps me occupied.

Thank you, Johann!

Editorial Notes

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Photography: Johann Husser (2023)
Location: Dresden, Germany

Links: Website, Instagram