William Ropp: Portrait
Kunstverein Villa Streccius Landau e.V. Südring 20 76829 Landau Allemagne
Artistic photography is far removed from just imaging the real world. The emotionally „naive „ first glance that trusts the documentary character of a photo, has been widely made obselete by technical and artistic developments. The photo is able to create surreal or virtual worlds, to produce visual angles, that have no adequate equivalent in the empirical world. This is the moment for the „Zweiten Blick“ (second glance), that leans towards the principles of design and method, that can unsettle our seeing habits, irritate or intensify, and will, undoubtably give our visual perception in its rational function towards realisation, a jolt. The artistic quality of photography can rarely be ascertained at first glence – the aesthetic intensity and sensitivity of the artist demand extra attention on the part of the observer.
The photographic far-sightedness of the internationally proven artists from Germany, France and the Ukraine stretch from the extemely direct, yet dignity preserving photos of naked older women, in social sub-milieus by Mikhailov, to the aesthetically stark compositions from Blume, the subversive pictures from Rieger or the mystically defamiliarised portraits from Ropp, the monolithically distanced works of Kizbihler, to the opulent-surreal stagings of Brenner.