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Rosanna, 1970

Photograph, 36 fotografies 12.6 x 8.5 cm c/u

Rosanna comes from the so-called ‘Time Series’ by Hans-Peter Feldmann. In these series, the photographer captures an everyday moment by taking advantage of the sequence of almost continuous shots that a roll of 35mm film allows. The final results give the viewer the sensation of seeing a series of stills taken from a film, a brief snatch of time, frozen, paused. Then the sense of time is subverted and the time scale of the object of the photographer is dislocated and expands, superimposing itself on the real time of the observer.

"I am not interested in the high points of life. Only five minutes of every day are interesting. I want to show the rest, normal life."

Hans-Peter Feldmann

"The human world is not defined only by that which is historical, by culture, by the whole of society, by ideological superstructures and politics. It is defined by this intermediate and mediating level: daily life. Here we can observe the most specific dialectic movements: necessity and desire, to enjoy and not to enjoy, satisfaction and privation, achievements and failures, work and non-work, the repetitive part and the creative part."

Henri Lefebvre

But which are the aspects of daily life that Feldmann shows? Up until now we have seen that his vision picks up on various aspects by including the images and objects which inhabit daily life and the narratives that we construct with all of this. But we can also see that he describes day to day activity and the area of "sensitive intimacy". In these narratives, his vision becomes much more contemplative.
The most extreme case of this abstracted vision are the numerous Time series, which he began in the seventies. These series are consecutive images of the same place or the same person in a very short space of time, similar to film stills. The themes are trivial ones: a man reading a newspaper, a couple walking down the street, a woman cleaning an office window, seagulls in the sky, the corner of a garden. Feldmann observes, contemplates small events. Nothing important or transcendent, just any moment on any given day. He captures the passing of time on the 36 images that make up a reel, with a speed close to that of a movie camera. But if in cinema it is present time which is lived, these series of photographs talk of capturing time itself, of stopping the invisible fluid which weaves our lives so that we may inspect it. These series respond to the perplexity felt before the idea of time, as if they were questioning the immanence of life.

Feldmann has converted trivial moments, the unattended moments which turn our lives into events, into something worthy of being photographed and recorded. We are dealing here with moments in which there is practically no action, in which nothing is happening. And where nothing is happening we can do nothing except be. If the collection explores the narratives which give meaning to having, then in these narratives located in temporal spaces in which nothing is happening, we are closer to being than to having. Closer to contemplative rather than active life. Hence the meditative nature of these series of such everyday images.

Helena Tatay

Helena Tatay, Texto, Helena Tatay (ed.), Hans-Peter Feldmann. 272 Pages. Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2001.


Technical details

Original title:
Rosanna
Registration number:
2253
Artist:
Feldmann, Hans-Peter
Date created:
1970
Date acquired:
2003
Fonds:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
Object type:
Photograph
Media:
Gelatin silver print.
Dimensions:
36 fotografies 12.6 x 8.5 cm c/u (height x width)
Credits:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation. Gift of the artist
Copyright:
© Hans Peter Feldmann, VEGAP, Barcelona
It has accessibility resources:
No

The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.

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