Flo Peters Gallery Mönckebergstraße 7 20095 Hamburg Allemagne
The Flo Peters Gallery starts into the new year with photographs by Werner Bartsch. His 'Desert Birds'-cycle depicts the aerospace storage bases in the south-west of the USA which are strictly sealed off from the outside world. For this project doors were only opened exceptionally. The illustrated book 'Desert Birds' was published by the Kehrer Verlag in 2010.
In his pictures Werner Bartsch illustrates the fascination of these places and focuses the strange and bizarre appearance of the disused airplanes in the expanse of the barren desert. In contrast to the activity of an airport one feels the isolation here. Instead of materials like steel, glass and concrete there are only sand, stones and some blades of grass. The contradictoriness between the airplanes as objects and the context of the desert creates new perspectives: like imposing metal sculptures the airplanes adapt themselves to the impassable area becoming artworks unintentionally.
The deserts in the south-west of the USA meet all conditions for an effective temporary storage or permanent disposal of airplanes: the large areas are cheap and moreover separated, which serves as a good protection against vandalism. The warm and arid climate reduces the risk of corrosion and water damage. Finally the areas are neutral regarding the political circumstances. Some bases serve as a temporary home for machines of later types of construction which are stored here due to economic crisis to be brought into action again in better periods. Sometimes the labels of the flight companies are taped in order to cover any sign which could give a hint to a company’s economic situation. On the other hand there are places which become the terminus of airplanes having reached their maximum of flight hours. The latter have been waiting there since decades for being cannibalized and scrapped. Their destiny mostly depends on the actual price for scrap metal.
For Werner Bartsch it is neither important to document these storages nor is his work a kind of stocktaking of disused machines. He rather creates compositions of colour, form, structure and light to provoke an aesthetic effect of the 'Desert Birds' of having started a life of their own unexpectedly. In many photographs he focuses some details and structures by using different levels of sharpness which run through the picture vertically whereas other areas remain concealed. Working with a reduced picture language Bartsch relates the airplanes and the surrounding scenery to each other in a way to reveal the myth of these places.