ABOUT NEGATIVES by hennric

About Negatives Hennric Jokeit

Mit Texten von Enno Kaufhold und Witold Kanicki Mit einem Essay von Enno Kaufhold

We can think about the negative without being able to see it. × Wir können Negativität denken, nicht aber mit eigenen Augen sehen. × Мы можем помыслить негативность, но своими глазами нам ее не увидеть.

Hennric Jokeit „Die Welt ist negativ“ Von Enno Kaufhold

Unter den Inkunabeln der Fotobücher gehört „Die Welt ist schön“ von Albert Renger-Patzsch aus dem Jahr 1928 in die vorderen Reihen. Berühmtheit erlangte es nicht, weil sich der Autor stringent an einem Thema abgearbeitet hat (wenngleich der Titel das suggeriert), sondern weil es mit seinem durchgehend neusachlichen Stil eine entschiedene fotografische Haltung verkörpert. In Anlehnung daran lässt sich von Hennric Jokeits Bildern sagen, dass sie ihrerseits in ihrer Motivik weniger auf ein einzelnes Thema als auf eine fotografische Methode, nämlich auf die ausschließliche Präsentation der Bilder in der Negativ- Form ausgerichtet sind. In dieser Stringenz reflektiert Jokeits Arbeit zunächst mediale Eigenheiten an der Schwelle vom analogen zum digitalen Bild. Genauer, er erweist dem im Verschwinden begriffenen Analogen seine Referenz. Denn das Negativ stand am Anfang der Fotografie. William Henry Fox Talbotts erste Versuche, bei denen er Laubblätter auf lichtempfindlich gemachtes Papier legte, bildeten diese in Negativ-Version ab. Heute sprechen wir von Fotogrammen. Daraus sollte sich in unmittelbarer Verbindung mit einem zweiten lichtempfindlichen Papier das positiv dargestellte Bild ergeben, die Kalotypie. Erfolgreicher, aber ganz und gar Negative, waren die Daguerreotypien. Die in der Camera obscura belichteten mit Silber beschichteten Kupferplatten waren an den sonnenbeschienenen Stellen geschwärzt und bildeten die Welt folglich als Negative ab. Allein ein dunkler Hintergrund hinter dem Betrachter bewirkte, dass sich die Tonwerte der auf der spiegelähnlichen Oberfläche liegenden Negative umkehrten und positive Bilder sichtbar wurden. Erst mit Erfindung der Glasnegative um 1850, von denen im Kontakt mit einem Fotopapier die Bilder kopiert wurden, trat das wahre Positiv auf den Plan, wie wir es kennen. Zeitlich ging das mit dem Expandie-

ren des Positivismus in den Wissenschaften einher. In einen ganz eigenen Stand trat das Negativ nach 1896 mit der Erfindung der Röntgenfotografie, die bis auf den heutigen Tag vornehmlich in der Medizin praktiziert wird. Zur künstlerischen Ausdrucksform avancierte das Bild in Negativ- Version im Zuge der Avantgarde der 1920er Jahre, nachdem die Erfahrungen mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg den Glauben an grundlegende ästhetische Werte erschüttert hatten. Namentlich verbinden sich damit Bildautoren wie László Moholy-Nagy oder Franz Roh. Am bekanntesten dürfte Man Rays Porträt seiner Muse Kiki de Montparnasse sein, die er 1926 zusammen mit einer afrikanischen Maske fotografierte: „Noire et blanche“. In einem Diptychon tritt die positive Version neben die negative. Zeitgleich erlebten die künstlerischen Fotogramme eine Blütezeit. Künstlerisch fand das Negativbild seit den 1950er Jahren im Kontext der Subjektiven Fotografie eine Wiederbelebung. Seitdem taucht es bis auf den heutigen Tag immer wieder in der Künstlerfotografie auf. Vor diesem historischen Hintergrund nimmt die stringente Negativ- Form in den Arbeiten von Hennric Jokeit eine neue Qualität ein. Technisch gesprochen arbeitet er mit einer Digitalkamera und wendet die gewonnenen Daten am Computer durch Kontrast-umkehrung ins Negativ. Da wir es bei den analogen Fotografien noch mit einem Negativ des Negativs zu tun hatten, ließe sich, wie jetzt bei Jokeits digital gewonnenen Bildern über die Negation der Negation philosophieren. Als Neurowissenschaftler, als der er seit Jahren tätig ist, weiß Jokeit allein schon von Berufswegen um die Anthropogenese des Menschen in deren Folge der Mensch das Negative in seiner Wahrnehmung nicht gewohnt ist. Aufgrund dieser Prägung rufen die Negativ-Formen allein schon neurophysiologisch eine Irritation hervor, genauer, sie evozieren eine Verlangsamung und mithin eine Entschleunigung der Wahrnehmung. Eingedenk dieses Wissens provoziert Jokeit mit seinen Bildern ganz bewusst eine Wahrnehmung, die sich der uns heute von den neuen Medien im Alltag mehr und mehr abverlangten entgegenstellt. Nicht von

ungefähr sprechen wir von einer Vermüllung der Welt mit Bildern. Für den künstlerischen Gehalt seiner Bilder in Negativ-Form ist jedoch die grundlegende Bedeutung des Negativen in diesen Tagen entscheidender. Der These von Byung-Chul Han folgend, wonach die bestehende Gesellschaft der Negativität heute einer Gesellschaft weicht, „in der die Negativität zugunsten der Positivität immer weiter abgebaut wird“, weil die Positiv-gesellschaft keine Negativgefühle zulässt (siehe seine Schrift Transparenzgesellschaft), müssen wir Jokeits dezidiert in Negativ-Form auftretende Bilder als Widerpart dieser Entwicklung begreifen. Beharren sie doch auf dem grundsätzlichen Wert des Negativen als Voraussetzung des Besseren, Positiven. Zugleich „spielt“ Jokeit, um den Begriff von Vilém Flusser zu übernehmen, gegen die Programmierung der digitalen Kamera. In ihr ist, wiederum Han, „jede Negativität getilgt. Sie bedarf weder der Dunkelkammer noch der Entwicklung. Kein Negativ geht ihr voraus. Sie ist reines Positiv“. Genau das will Jokeit nicht. Mit der Inversion der Tonwerte hebt er die Programmierung auf. Welcher Art sind nun aber seine Motive? Sie zeigen moderne städtische Architektur verschiedenster Regionen, Industrie-anlagen, einfachste Häuser wie Behausungen, Interieurs, Müll, aber zugleich Natur. Intakt genauso wie ruinös und verfallen. Alle Orte, draußen wie drinnen, scheinen verlassen, jegliches Leben ausgelöscht. Hier ein stehengebliebenes Auto oder eine Baumaschine, dort ein zurückgelassenes Bügelbrett, ein liegengebliebener Büstenhalter. Relikte menschlichen Lebens. Solchermaßen entleert, um nicht zu sagen entmenschlicht, schwingt in den Negativ-Formen ein Geheimnis mit. Zugleich können sie als Anstoß begriffen werden, als Aufforderung, die als negativ empfundene Welt zu negieren. Das jedoch ist Sache der Betrachter. Enno Kaufhold, Berlin im November 2014

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Tristes Tropiques Traurige Tropen (Sad Tropics)

2012â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2013

Tristes Tropiques / Traurige Tropen (1955) ist Claude Lévi-Strauss‘ bekanntestes Buch; ein opulenter Genremix aus Reisebericht, Kulturkritik, ethnologischer Studie, Essay und Literatur. Der Titel Tropen ist mehrdeutig, denn er verweist neben seiner geographischen Bedeutung auf rhetorische Stilfiguren, die Begriffe durch bildhafte Ausdrücke ersetzen. Diese mentalen Visualisierungen waren für Lévi-Strauss‘ Untersuchungen unverzichtbar. Sie sind “Sinnbilder für ein Kommendes, das wir noch nicht zu erkennen vermögen, und Abbilder einer sich zum eigenen Überdruß gewordenen Epoche” (Jean Améry). Das Dispositiv trauriger Tropen ist zweifellos negativ. × Tristes Tropiques (1955) is Claude Lévi-Strauss’s most famous book. It is a lavish mix of genres, such as travel writing, cultural critique, ethnological study, essay and literature. The title, which would literally translate as Sad Tropics, suggests ambiguity. Besides its geographic denotation, it evokes the association of the tropes of rhetoric by which writers substitute abstract concepts for verbal images, which was so characteristic of Lévi-Strauss’s work. His studies are “symbols prefiguring a future that we cannot yet see and reflections of an epoch which has had its surfeit of itself” (Jean Améry). The concept of tristes tropiques is undeniably a negative one.

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Negative Vision By Witold Kanicki One of the largest achievements of the interwar art period was the New Vision photographic movement that revolutionised artistic observation of the world by opening the medium to new conventions, techniques, and led to a redefinition of the existing ways of recording and creation. The more significant theorists and practitioners of this movement, such as L谩szl贸 Moholy-Nagy or Franz Roh1, frequently wrote in their publications about revolutionary innovations in photographic craft, such as new perspectives in taking photos, photomontage and negative photography, including the photogram technique. Expanding the methods of creating images has allowed photography to go beyond realism, empiricism and documentation, that is, to expand beyond the concepts and categories usually associated with the medium of photography. At that point, photography ceased to be a realistic representation of the world, activating the viewer, and requiring a more in-depth reading of photographs. Even though the radical assumptions of the New Vision were on the verge of utopia, it is beyond doubt that the expanded field of photographic conventions had a significant impact on the later development of photography. Thus, negatives, which until the interwar period had been used almost solely in the process of developing photos as a step in the process of getting the positive image, became autonomous and gained the status of a finished artwork. In other words, the methods and processes previously viewed as incorrect became the centre of artistic discourse in the 1920s. Since then many photographers have used the specific aesthetic qualities of negatives, regardless of their chiaroscuro differences and lack of resemblance to the perceived world. One of the contemporary artists who uses the convention of photographic negativity is L. Moholy-Nagy, Photography in advertising [1927], in: Photography in the modern era: European documents and critical writings, 1913-1940, New York 1989, pp. 86-93, p. 90. Analogical opinions in: L. Moholy-Nagy, Unprecedented photography [1929], in: Photography in the modern era..., op. cit., pp. 83-85. See also: F. Roh, The value of photography, [1930] in: Photography in the modern era..., op. cit., p. 162. 1

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Hennric Jokeit. His photos depict images of negative vision, thanks to which an extracted piece of seemingly trivial reality gains new meanings and transgresses the literalness of the message, taking the viewer into a world of symbols and abstraction. Architecture and urban landscapes, industrial buildings, apartment and home interiors, as well as nature or abstract details, all these repeating motifs in Hennric Jokeit’s photos are shown in a reverse order of light and shade. Although photography is usually perceived as a direct copy of reality, it is in fact a planar image showing the world in a conventional system that requires a certain skill to decipher. Regarding the issue of legibility of photographs, Moholy-Nagy pointed out that “Every pictorial rendering is an abstraction to be retranslated into its original meaning”.2 The need to read or interpret images applies to every photograph, regardless of whether it is a daguerreotype, colour reversal film or a monochromatic negative. It is certain, however, that negatives, which could be understood as a dialect of the photographic language, demand more effort and knowledge from the viewer. A reader of Hennric Jokeit’s photography faces a choice between two methods of reading the content. While the first is based on an exchange of the chiaroscuro visible in the photographs into its positive counterpart and an attempt to read it in a realistic manner, the second is related to accepting the visible tones and an attempt to read the images as they are. Sometimes the translation (or rather a reversal occurring in our minds) of some fragments of a negative photograph into a realistic version occurs automatically. However, the moment that completely abstract photos stand in front of a viewer’s gaze (e.g. pp. 17, 69, 85) the first method proves inefficient; the fragments, or even whole photos, may conceal their real content from the viewer who is unfamiliar with the real-life prototype of the negative photograph. This is precisely when the second way of reading begins to dominate, in which the dark sky of negative photos and windows filled with blackness suggest not so much a reversed daylight, but a nocturnal landscape. Following this pattern of deciphering Hennric Jokeit’s photos, trees visible in many of them

L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion [1947], Chicago 1961, p. 121

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transgresses the literalness of the message, taking the viewer into a world of symbols and abstraction. Architecture and urban landscapes, industrial buildings, apartment and home interiors, as well as nature or abstract details, all these repeating motifs in Hennric Jokeit’s photos are shown in a reverse order of light and shade. Although photography is usually perceived as a direct copy of reality, it is in fact a planar image showing the world in a conventional system that requires a certain skill to decipher. Regarding the issue of legibility of photographs, Moholy-Nagy pointed out that “Every pictorial rendering is an abstraction to be retranslated into its original meaning”.2 The need to read or interpret images applies to every photograph, regardless of whether it is a daguerreotype, colour reversal film or a monochromatic negative. It is certain, however, that negatives, which could be understood as a dialect of the photographic language, demand more effort and knowledge from the viewer. A reader of Hennric Jokeit’s photography faces a choice between two methods of reading the content. While the first is based on an exchange of the chiaroscuro visible in the photographs into its positive counterpart and an attempt to read it in a realistic manner, the second is related to accepting the visible tones and an attempt to read the images as they are. Sometimes the translation (or rather a reversal occurring in our minds) of some fragments of a negative photograph into a realistic version occurs automatically. However, the moment that completely abstract photos stand in front of a viewer’s gaze (e.g. pp. 17, 69, 85) the first method proves inefficient; the fragments, or even whole photos, may conceal their real content from the viewer who is unfamiliar with the real-life prototype of the negative photograph. This is precisely when the second way of reading begins to dominate, in which the dark sky of negative photos and windows filled with blackness suggest not so much a reversed daylight, but a nocturnal landscape. Following this pattern of deciphering Hennric Jokeit’s photos, trees visible in many of them seem to be sculpted from a transparent light substance resembling ice (pp. 12, 13). Similarly, the interior floors or the ground in some landscapes are icy

L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion [1947], Chicago 1961, p. 121

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and transparent. Such interpretation stems from a shift in the default source of light; negatives often show spaces that seem to be lit from below. Building facades embedded in light ground as well as the walls of rooms rising from transparent floors in many photos seem unnaturally dark, as if scorched by fire (pp. 32, 64, 86). Moreover, light coming from below in negative photographs gives certain lightness to the objects above, in some cases giving them an appearance of levitation. The consequence of reversing the positive language of photography into its negative dialect is also abandonment of the empirical qualities of the medium in favour of an approach of reading that accommodates romantic, symbolic or surrealistic connotations. Should we assume that the tones’ inversion causes the transformation of a daytime view into a strange night world, then the side effect of such a change will be the transformation of reality into a dream, physical space into a metaphysical landscape in which all the obvious is annulled. The negative vision replaces common reality with an unreal and unearthly landscape. Similar inversion was previously described by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote: “[…]perhaps this world is only the negative of that better one in which lights will be turned to shadows and shadows into light […]”3. This American writer and apologist for photography used a metaphor of negative to describe the differences between the temporal and spiritual world. When reading Hennric Jokeit’s photos, this change of familiar and common views into surprising; unknown and dreamlike negatives may lead to the Freudian sensation of the Uncanny (Ger. Unheimlich), related to unfamiliar and disturbingly strange phenomena. In the case of the photos of ruined buildings or devastated interiors (pp. 38, 87), this mood is heightened by the dramatic atmosphere of the image itself that evokes associations with images of a post-apocalyptic landscape that was a scene of unidentified catastrophe. It is accompanied by the abovementioned transparency of objects, as if overexposed by rays of an outburst that penetrates them (pp. 44, 50). Some of the visible objects have

O. W. Holmes, The Stereoscope and Stereograph [1859], in: Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to Present, ed. Vicki Goldberg, Simon and Schuster New York 1981, pp. 100-114. 3

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themselves become sources of light radiating with an extraordinary brightness. The catastrophic ambience in Hennric Jokeit’s photos is intensified by the emptiness of photographed landscapes. This world seems abandoned by people who have left their apartments, their workplaces, cars and other objects. Such depressing energy is also the result of reversing positive image into negative and the change in mood and emotional message of photographed scene that comes with it. Similar change was very aptly described by Roh in relation to his projections of negative images onto walls which made people realize “how magic here the day-world was transformed into a night-world, how it turned from a major into a minor key”4. The positive, major-key overtone of a realistic, positive print turns into a minorkey, melancholic and sad atmosphere of the negative. Such resonance of the negative landscapes by Hennric Jokeit brings to mind the psychological and melancholic spaces of Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings that are also filled with stillness, calm, silence and strange, unnatural chiaroscuro. Photographs showing mountain landscapes, on the other hand, evoke associations with romantic landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich. An additional factor that strengthens the melancholic dimension of his photos is the coolness penetrating the icy transparent forms suspended in nocturnal space. Domination of dark colours, which is another characteristic of negative convention, also connotes murky feeling. Melancholy is unveiled in liminal states, filling the space between oppositions – day and night, summer and winter, warm and cold, etc. It is no coincidence that Victor Hugo wrote: “Melancholy is a twilight state…”5 An enigmatic time of day and year, unspecified weather conditions, blurred shapes of unknown purpose are characteristic of Hennric Jokeit’s photographs, suspended in time and space of negative, between reality and its positive image. The obscurity described here also resembles the atmosphere of dreams. Just as in dreams, in negative photos literalness is replaced by F. Roh, On the freer possibilities of photography, [1951], in: Retrospektive fotografie: Franz Roh, ed. J. Roh, Düsseldorf 1981, pp. 38-39. V. Hugo, Toilers of the Sea, [1866] trans. J. Hogarth, New York 2002 4

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mysterious signs and symbols that often relate to hidden layers of the human psyche. In this respect, Hennric Jokeit’s photos come closer to nocturnal tradition in photography, practiced in the first half of the 20th century by Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz and Brassaï. Interpreting one of Steichen’s nocturnal photos, William Sharpe stated “Night is a time of dreaming, of freeing repressed libidinal energies, and photographs such as this subtly exploit the suggestive properties of the urban landscape, using a symbolic language to disclose truths hidden at midday”6. This is also the case in Hennric Jokeit’s photographs, in which city landscapes and their typical architectonic elements at times take forms that suggest sexual associations. Hennric Jokeit’s negative vision shifts the weight of reading into symbolic and not literal layers of the image, distancing viewers from empirical experience. Witold Kanicki, Poznan, Mai 2015 Translated by Aleksandra Jakubczak

W. Sharpe, New York, Night, and Cultural Mythmaking: The Nocturne in Photography, 1900-1925, “Smithsonian Studies in American Art”, II, 1988, no 3, p. 11. 6

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