Lewis Baltz: Rule without Exception
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Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:12
This is the fifth and obviously last talk or conversation or presentation which we wanted to connect with this semester of the Studio of Metropolitan Architecture.
00:26
And I know, I mean, speaking for us as a group of students, you're all obviously very tired and in a way you're all kind of just finished with your own work which you're going to present tomorrow morning.
00:43
And you could say, what's the point in having this last moment of input even when everything is already finished? Well, I mean, to give a more general point, I think we believe very much that this semester is one of trying to define a topic, right?
01:02
And that topic we define until the very end. Also the hope that we can use it in some way in the next semester. Also in an attempt to get a clearer idea of what Metropolitan Architecture, its representation, its imagery could be or is not or to what extent it's definable
01:24
in order to start in the second semester a more common-like exercise. Now, at the same time, this being the fifth of a set of presentations and lectures, as I wanted to recall, we started with Christoph O'Haraway
01:42
who tried to somehow, through the word itself, define what Metropolitan Architecture could be. We had a couple of other presentations among, for example, Francois Charbonnet who will be tomorrow in the jury, almost literally making showing work which you could or could not connect to what we understood as the language of Metropolitan Architecture, if that exists.
02:08
The response has always been, I think, for us, I mean, very much in the studio, and very much this, what I would dare to call, and I use simplistic terms, terms I hope our podcasts will question or challenge,
02:23
this, you could say, fundamental shift from his work, which we all know, and that's probably symptomatic for it. This is the truck house, Science of Technology. Oh no, it's the last one. Anyhow, sometimes in these pictures of this book, you see these typical, austere,
02:40
black and white pictures of buildings in the American landscape or even the American landscape itself. And then the work he did in the late 80s, early 90s, of which this book ruled without exception, but also the exhibition Roam du Nuit, which he did in 1992, in the Centre Pompidou, became somehow emblematic.
03:01
You could say a shift from this kind of black and white picture from, let's say, the mid-70s towards this very colourful, full-colour, gigantic size, detail-like pictures of surveillance camera photographs, if not of the same grain of that.
03:21
Now, we were very much interested also in the studio to maybe understand or misunderstand this graphical shift, and we invited you at the time to work on one perspective, a portrait rather than landscape, which in one way or another carries in it
03:43
the same sense of place, the same sense of negotiation with technology, perhaps. Because we felt that in one way or another it was a good device, a good vehicle to represent what we tried to define as metropolitan architecture.
04:01
Now, of course, Stefano Granziano and Bas Prince both, I would say, exceptionally good photographers, and both people who have been very influential to us, ourselves as an office, us as different offices here in both in form,
04:22
and as form in general, have both of them very much in one way or another, I would dare to say, a relationship with themselves, with the work of both, I think, I believe. So we thought it would have been a very good occasion to ask them about how we could or could not interpret this, I'd say, the last work of Bas,
04:45
of Bas who died, by the way, in 2014, and did not make much else since his late 90s work, maybe apart from the print, you could say, of this size of technology, which was to a certain extent a reprint of the very same picture,
05:01
at least that's how I always understood it, he used for his Rondin Niu series, but then as full option pictures, very much in the logic of his earlier work. Now, maybe already this is a bad interpretation. I would like to give the work both to Bas and Stefano,
05:20
and I promise that I would from time to time ask questions to guide a little bit the conversation, if necessary. But perhaps maybe to start a possible conversation, are we right with that? Are there two balances? Stefano.
05:40
Thank you very much for the invitation and for having the chance of talking about this work with you and with Bas. So, I took one of the books he did in the second stage of his production, which is, I don't know if it's very well known,
06:03
but it was supposed to be a commission project for a museum in California. So, an assignment. Please, we are building up a new museum, and we would like to have you, Louis, both to do the photographs for us.
06:21
And the response of Louis was this one. This is a second version of the book, and it's about, it's autobiographical. So, in that area, in that bay, in that region, where he was living and where he grew up before coming back,
06:40
he was already living in Europe. There was a kind of a chronicle event, so a martyr. And in the jury of the trial, his father was part of the jury. So, his response to this very precise assignment was,
07:01
I will do something about this happening in this area several years ago, in which I am kind of a part of, because his father, he was a part of, because his father was part of the trial.
07:20
And I'm saying that because there is a very big part of autobiographical effect in, I think, in Louis' books, and I think in all authors. So, there is a very, of course, autobiography, and it's the first, probably the first, effect on the world.
07:41
And I met Louis both several times. We were sharing space, lunches, smoking and drinking, and a lot of talks. And there are some, the beginning of this text, which he was writing, I think is very much, how do you say, representative of how he was reacting towards things.
08:05
So, in 1988, I found myself living in Milan, in my wife's house, observing and contributing to the deterioration of my third marriage. We had moved to Milan from Paris earlier that winter, giving up an apartment near the Place Danfer,
08:23
where we had lived for the previous two years. My wife, that had lived in Paris of and since 1979, and she loved the city. I hated it, or thought that I did. She turned and hated Milan, where she had grown up,
08:43
and felt that returning there was an ambition of the city. So, I think Louis was really like that. So, in this way, observing the world had this kind of out of dark irony towards everything. So, the first works has been described by him like,
09:03
also biographical, because it was basically the landscape he was having in front of his window. He was living here, not far from here. So, it was something that was happening around him. So, this new developing of, for example, Park City, or for example, areas like Candlestick Point,
09:21
or areas like San Quentin Point were very familiar to him. And the aim of these first works were showing the obscenity, how obscene the world was being transformed into, which I think is a very strong statement.
09:44
And so, the point, I think, is then, the point turned into something else. He moved to America, to Europe. He changed his way of doing things. I think the way he was looking at things,
10:00
and was looking at life, was the same, and didn't do anything more in black and white. He changed it because he felt he was a kind of professional worker, asked to do things that people knew he could do. So, for example, the response was completely
10:24
moving from the initial idea of his life. So, it was kind of escaping from his own character, trying to change, because otherwise, anything that has been transformed,
10:40
his work would have been transformed into a style. So, that was the big shift. And I think he did many new, let's say, site-specific works, which were, for example, the light figure work, or the things he did in Italy,
11:02
which are pieces that have to be just seen there, so they cannot move, they have just to be seen there. And so, he tried to find a second life, or a second option for his work, trying to cancel or to renew the beginnings.
11:23
I don't know if it was, I think this is the idea I have of this particular moment. Another thing, very negative, he was actually saying that everybody has kind of ten years,
11:41
ten years' time to develop the best part of this work. And he was also saying, I had that at the very beginning, so he never really admitted it was stopping, but at the point he stopped. That's funny, the last comment you gave,
12:01
because the last comment you gave is a bit different from the other comments, I think. The sense, I mean, that almost sounds like the acknowledgement of defeat, that you accepted the fact that you made your seminal work in the first ten years. Yeah. And that you survived all along the way,
12:22
being increasingly aware of your own autobiography. I mean, if you would read the work which comes afterwards like that, it's more a matter of survival than work you should take seriously. I don't think the realization or the thing was realized at the early 90s,
12:45
so when Rule Without Exception came out, I think it's a process of understanding that. So, I don't think he planned to have ten years, or this is what he said, or this is what can be assumed as real,
13:02
but it's something that happened. I'll start talking from here. Then he will start talking to me. Yeah. Bas, I mean, so Stefano brings in this aspect of autobiography,
13:22
but autobiography alone cannot be enough for an artist to make work for the world, I would say. So, what's your take on that? I mean, but it's interesting because Stefano, for things that he knew, I think this makes a big difference. It also kind of corrects, in a strange way,
13:44
if you know someone, it can correct your view on the work. It can somehow eliminate certain problems or things that you have with the work because it can be explained by the person. You have an understanding because he has a certain character,
14:02
you understand certain way of work. I have not any relation like that with him, so I look at it like any other artist that is from the past, and you look at it as a kind of a pure and completely without the person behind.
14:24
I don't know how to explain, but since you don't know the person behind, you understand there is a character behind, but you cannot read it through the character. And then I think this Regal of Arsene, I bought this book,
14:41
I think it was the first book by Balz I bought, but I bought it like you sometimes do, by accident book, and you put it in your library, and then it sits there, and then you accumulate other books of the same author, and you all of a sudden realize that this book is by the same author. I almost cannot imagine that it's by the same person.
15:03
So if you start to look at this earlier books, which I particularly like very, very much Park City, as a kind of emblem of what he did, that's for me the most interesting. And then it's very difficult to understand this Regal of Arsene as a work.
15:25
It almost feels like a cut. But it was an exhibition. It was an exhibition, but it also feels like a deliberate cut, in the sense that you just push it off otherwise.
15:56
So I think I have the feeling that this book marked a cut,
16:00
and really literally, you know, maybe it marked the cut of him going from the States to Europe. But it also seems that it's cut in the sense that maybe he grew a bit tired of the aesthetics that he was in way caught in. The aesthetics being this, right?
16:20
Yes, the aesthetics being this. Also this kind of bookmaking, so this kind of one image perfectly represented, quite small, in a big book, and then just 50 pictures in a row. Very beautiful, very classical, very precise. The aesthetics also being two things. Being this, and then I showed it.
16:41
Also being this. Being the exhibition. Also being this, the series, typically. Yeah, but that's not the series. It's this. No, being this, right? I mean, that was what you could say the canon of parts. Yes, and you also understand that somehow, because he never showed in any of these early books,
17:03
installation shows, so you also did not have an idea that these were supposed to be in a grid. And I think, you know, I have this book, and also by accident I have seen, I think, St. Quentin Point, the one where also the color images are in.
17:21
The first color, 89. So it's a very strange block of the candlestick. Yeah, the candlestick point with the, it's a kind of a block of images in a grid, then sometimes there is no image in the grid, and sometimes there is a colored image in the grid. It's very puzzling why he did it. And somehow in the book, you don't have that interaction with the work.
17:44
You have a completely different interaction. And somehow when I was reading today, when I was going in the train, and I was looking through the book, I also had somehow this idea that it might be that these two different ways, so the impact of the installation,
18:01
and the way how you read the book, that there is a kind of discrepancy between the two. And I have the feeling that this rule, without exception, he tried to correct somehow, he tried to correct this, because in this book you have installation views. You have one or two images of the series. You know, the series is not important in the sense,
18:20
in this catalog. Of course, it's an exhibition catalog, but still I think he was close involved. So, you can read it as a correction. Sorry, you were not reading it completely correct. Now look at it in this way. You mean he introduces the complexity of the way he was presenting? I think so. Let me just say, if this is a typical picture now,
18:42
it's of course shown in a leading way. This is the way you should have shown it before without the text. This is the way, let's say, this is the way it was shown in exhibitions. And all these ways he brings together in one book, and then he adds another chapter, which is of course... Which is his cover.
19:01
Yes, in a way, very gradually, we go to Kalmostick. It's weird, because it's almost, this whole rule without exception, it's almost like the overcompet, because he hardly made anything since then. His last book. Yes, but that's the next problem of course. We can come to that later. Then he adds these. These are new pictures?
19:21
Yes. Fragment? These. These. These. And then he shows also? Yes. This is how it was shown at Ronde du Nuit, right? Yes. It's basically what is brought all together. Totally different. But it's also true that you can see the difference only when you see both, because if you see the pictures alone,
19:41
you would say, ah, the guy went to color, and he cannot handle the camera very well. But you see here, it's all on purpose. I think that the red one. This one? The one before. The one before. This one. This was made in Ghana.
20:01
And it's this photo. And it's about commuting. So it's not about, so there's always an intuition in the world, which is also one thing is the picture, the other hand is what it takes at the time. So this intuition towards the city,
20:20
as you were introducing, or towards how the world works, how he thinks the world is going, or towards where? Absolutely. I was reading over lunch this obituary, right, where he was quoted having been said. He couldn't verify that he was after, I would say, showing Europe in his last series,
20:42
in the series in the late 80s, early 90s, at least whether he couldn't verify the quote. But as you say, commuting or infrastructure, I mean, if you talk Europe of the 80s, early 90s, that's exactly what is Europe, right? Yeah. Commuting as a human condition.
21:04
For example, in the commuting thing, there's no people appearing, but the thing is that people is involved in the world. So the intuition towards the future, I think, is the most living character of his work.
21:26
So like, for example, the first works in the black and white things are about the obscenity and are about how the world would be in the future.
21:40
So where the world would develop in the future, in the relative future, of course. I think there we arrive at a very interesting point, especially for photographers. That is, where can you do that? Where can you say something about the future? Which is that spot. Because he managed very well to do it in his own front yard.
22:02
The place where he knew very precisely, which he knew what was obscene and what not, in a way. No, I mean, it was not a big choice for him to decide to photograph one thing or the other. He knew what was new, what was going to be kind of stupid and what not.
22:21
Absolutely. I find it really interesting what you say, in the sense that in an era, and maybe we're only past that era, but, I mean, the last 10 years were very much like that. No, I mean, and even photographers do both very much like, I mean, Nick or so. But other photographers, too, push it further, like the idea that what you want to show about the world,
22:41
you need to go and see the furthest possible. You see here an artist, if I call it that way, who is able to talk about, as you said, the future by talking about his own life, by talking about his neighborhood. And, of course, the neighborhood changes. I mean, meaning he moves. But, as you say, he does not need to look
23:02
for a representation of today in the minds of, I don't know what, or he finds it in Milan where he lives. At that moment, as he finds it in Paris where he lives before, as he finds it in Irvine because he lives around the corner. That's interesting. How do you,
23:21
I mean, especially, I mean, Bas is a photographer who doesn't always photograph around the corner. How do you see that? I think it's, I would almost dare to say that he knew it in America and he had trouble with it in Europe. And I think that's why there's a lot less work in Europe. Maybe this he was happy with
23:40
and then the rest was unreadable. The landscape is not readable or the history is not readable. You're not accustomed with it. You don't know when something is an anomaly, when it's something normal, when it's part of history, when it's a progress or not. It's not so simple, you mean? It's not so simple, I think. And I find it also interesting that,
24:02
let's say, in a way, the sites of technology is in a way, again, a classic Lewis Biles book. But in a way, he goes back to his old it's not anymore landscapes. It's just technology that could be anywhere. It could be in Europe. It could also be in America.
24:20
It's not anymore linked to a certain spot. So I wonder, I mean, of course you can. But I would almost say that if I look from a distance, that is a classic case of, let's say, you move because you feel that you're not, you can't do enough in your own place.
24:43
But then when you arrive to the new place, you actually realize that all you know is about the place where you came from. Would you consider these, I mean, I showed you three pictures because they're here in this book. Well, no, let's say four or five. So let's say here, here, here, here, here.
25:02
Like this, like this, five. Would you consider this a failure? I mean... No, I wouldn't consider it a failure, but it seems it didn't have a lot of... It was the best he could get. There is so little that it's hard to call it a failure because it somehow
25:21
it's so precisely edited that it... But it's hard to have an opinion about the thing, because you don't know where it sits within the work, you don't know... It's almost like it's a thought that he had and he had to do and he did it well, but then he also didn't know anymore
25:40
how to continue after that. But maybe also because in Europe, you also have to understand the European field of photography and the American field of photography. Maybe the European part of photography was also getting extremely strong at that moment, especially in Italy.
26:03
It's kind of exploding at that moment. So it might also be that he couldn't find a place where to insert the things that he... Where he had a place in America. Because we still consider him an American photographer. We never say he's a European photographer. Never, ever.
26:21
We would never, ever say this. While most of his life he lived in Europe. He used to follow... I mean, Bas's comments are interesting comments. Like, he goes to Europe, he needs to move, he takes pictures in a totally different way, touching things you've seen before.
26:41
He doesn't dare to call it a failure, but he does somehow say, perhaps, that's what he could get out of it. And he's stuck. You see it like that as well? I think that if... I don't know, what I find always interesting is
27:00
the level of intuition you can put into the work. And comparing it to other... You mentioned the new topographics or other authors contemporary to him. I wouldn't say it's a failure.
27:20
So I always... Because it's so... It's also very remarkable trying to step out of this stylish way is understood and trying doing something completely different. Which is something that a lot of people really cannot do.
27:41
Because it's very difficult. Many couldn't do that. And they found themselves in a real failure. Kind of. So maybe money success, but if you compare it to this radicality, it's also possible to understand this
28:00
as a much worse failure, if we call it a failure. So the level of the intuition is always very much... So... I mean, you can argue also something else.
28:21
You can also say it's not the problem of US and Europe. You can say it's the problem of landscape versus city. Yeah, sorry. The intuition. Or where the future will be. If at the beginning it was founded into what we now call
28:42
landscape photography. As we put that into a category. Maybe it's trying to do the same within the side body, for example. So in the medical how we are in hospitals. So the control people can have
29:02
on bodies, on other people's bodies. Which is the same concept, I guess, of the surveillance cameras that takes into consideration in the other world. And it was not too far from that. So the future was really that. So the evolution wasn't
29:21
possible to find within the strict sense of the landscape, but it would have been possible to find into the operations on how people interact with other people's bodies. Through CCTV, through control, through medicalisation.
29:41
Medicalisation is a kind of big paradigm for that. How do we control other people's bodies? So how far can we go into the control of other people's bodies? So I think that was probably one big issue. I don't know if it was autobiographical because it was kind of getting sick.
30:03
Can be. Can not. They saw that in front of, for example, John Gossage. John Gossage is just a piece of piece in front of the piece. He went on doing things. He can come here doing a series and take out a fantastic book.
30:21
But it is somehow true that soon after this series and already with this series he gradually stops taking photographs himself. Up to a point, and of course you could say, wasn't that also ahead of its time? You see people like ten years later or seven years later,
30:42
a little bit later in any case, starting to buy pictures or appropriate pictures in the mid-90s. The photographs of the stars, for example. That might all be true, but I think it is interesting to understand when that happened. What triggered that?
31:00
Is it really this moment of moving from one place to the other? Is it a personal story? We don't really know. It is interesting to contemplate that the things that you know that you can do in the place that you know best might not be the things that you can do
31:21
in the place that you don't know. So you have to find a new way. I think the interesting part here in this work is that you see him trying to find. It is still unclear also to say if it is good or not. Maybe it doesn't matter.
31:41
You can also see something else and that doesn't necessarily speak for him, but maybe I am wrong. I hope you will disagree with me. The work he has in the 60s and 70s is heavily adapted to minimalistic conceptual art practices. I mean, in a way, you could say he lands the aesthetic
32:01
and he uses it in photography. The work is so appealing because it looks like minimalistic conceptual art but it is a photograph. In other words, the reason why it is so easily canonized today is that it, together with that work of that time, it is canonized because it became, to a certain extent, conservative today.
32:21
Everybody likes this. This work, I would dare to say, coincides with artworks of that period, which are also very similar. You know, you see the video art appearing. In a way, the aesthetic is again very similar. You could also see his work always as emulating the current art practices
32:41
in photography. I think it is completely true in that sense because he was really part of it. He is not emulating. No, I mean, you have to acknowledge, you know. I mean, it was not that he was looking at that Rocher, it was almost the other way around.
33:02
It is not clear, at least. And that is also the interesting part. What is very interesting is that very often when people talk about evolution, of course he tries to give us a clue, because we have a tendency to look at, say, the very early works. Roughly this, or even earlier, in a way. Track houses.
33:21
And then we say, hi, there was that. And then there was Ronde Nuit. But of course what he tries to show in this book is that, yeah, then gradually you had this. And this is already quite different. And then you had this. There are fires there. And then you had already gradually the focus is somehow disappearing.
33:41
Color is even better. Really? The perfect frame gradually becomes less and less important, one could say. Or at least it's at least a big use. And gradually then you get this. So in other words, I think if we are looking for an explanation, he tries to give it to us in the very book, I would say.
34:01
Or at least he tries to make us believe that there was not such a thing as an A and a B. But there was a slow evolution towards acknowledging all of photography, acknowledging zoom, working differently with light, working differently with framing, up to the point that you get this. Why not?
34:25
When you were talking something else that you could underline is for example how it dealt with the titles. So it's something that in the beginning is very strictly geographical. So related to a place
34:41
that is a park city that is kind of the point that is something like Nevada. So geographical spots you can think on a map. And this is disappearing
35:00
towards different titles that are supposing different ideas. So I think it's an answer you can find towards this book. It's also in the presence or less of geography, let's say, into titles. This is for example very
35:21
geographically set but has a strict connection with the chronicle fact. This is a place where I think some politicians were killed. under a stylish point of view is a perfect topographic photograph
35:40
somebody like a topographer could do, but there was this caption saying what has happened there. So it has a chronicle relation with the geography and the history of that place. So I think it's also part of this evolution you were underlining, flipping the
36:02
pages without exception. So there are many in fact I saw rich in the work and however producing less and less in terms of quantity I think it's growing and growing on the other side.
36:23
So whether the amount of pictures is decreasing, then the amount of ideas is probably I mean I know of course it's a debate and for the sake of the I'd like to I would say exaggerate a little bit. If I exaggerate a bit I'd say I hear two very different voices
36:41
I mean it's not entirely true perhaps, but say Bas who's kind of worried about the lack of consistent production towards the end and asks himself how to place that work I would say put question marks next to the quality of the very last book roughly. And you
37:01
the more you talk about it, the more you seem to almost argue that his best work is the last work. Is that true? I don't know if it's the best, but most ideas you say more aware of his work I think they make that earlier work stronger. If he would have continued doing I think there
37:21
I agree Lausanne point I don't know or whatever I think there it is interesting because I don't need to defend anymore I have no agenda at all I'm just interested
37:40
in the fact that you can do this work and then you have to you have to cut it somehow as an artist you have to make this break because you know you have to you cannot continue the last book is probably the one that you think was probably the one that I made too much this happens
38:00
and then you have to find a new way I'm curious how he made that decision and it's also interesting to see what how it was taken by the outside world because of course you can do these things for yourself but then they are embedded in people find something about it
38:22
they think about it, they look at it and they have an opinion and I'm most interested in this fact that he in the States he really photographs landscape which is starting to be urbanized which is also you could say a kind of a almost virgin urbanization
38:42
it's an urbanization that is taking place on nothing and then he photographs it normally at the moment when they are still building it so it's not inhabited yet there is no patina there is no nothing or it's destroyed, one or the other it's either destroyed or it's being built up and he goes to Europe and it doesn't exist
39:01
this condition doesn't exist the condition of the empty landscape where things happen and because it happens on a because it happens in the States on a nothing on a tabula rasa you can read it very precisely because of this and because of that
39:22
and then you come to Europe and he's in the city and all these things are let's say not anymore applicable all the things that he learned and that he was looking at are somehow let's say the tools are not anymore in his hands so he has to re-learn or he has to re-see
39:41
so then I understand that he starts to do these things how to move through the city how to maybe there is a clue there maybe there is a clue in the technology maybe there is a I think he's just looking for ways to read how you see the future or the progress and I think these two landscapes
40:03
need different ways of looking and I think that is interesting because you find that yourself also when I go to China I don't know half of it I just don't know I have to find new ways I want to I think we talked a lot about topics and new ways
40:21
and how to approach it I want to the second point that's for a bit later I want to go later to the question of anthropology but before I wanted to ask and I wanted to start with you a question about in a way quality quality of the picture and maybe in relationship to that
40:41
and maybe to start that discussion of quality framing I took this here this picture because the right picture is actually a picture and you know very well I think from Park City which he puts differently in the book and you could argue he puts it differently so it all of a sudden fits in this series which he makes towards the end of the book which is the last series
41:02
and all of a sudden the picture looks very different I think I mean it's a very different picture it's very different because it's next to the other yeah of course but for the two reasons the combination does it well and it's even so much zoomed that in a strange way it's not even so sharp which somehow relates very much to say the work we were just discussing
41:21
what was this or say that so I was wondering you especially Bas who I think in your work the framing, sharpness in a way the relatively classical elements of say the composition of the image and
41:42
you've been talking a little bit also about the second edition very late and he made it two or three years before he died the sites of technology where in a way some of these pictures he'd used especially the ones of the big computers he republished all of a sudden very beautifully framed all of a sudden super sharp
42:01
how do you relate to that I mean to what extent is this and I think it's a difficult discussion in contemporary photography how important do you find that framing, quality, sharpness and can you relate to that in the discussion of the master of compounds I think it all has to do with how consistent the series is
42:20
it depends, you can do whatever you want I think also I think you really can go back to your own work and cut it there is no the more I think about it the less problems I have with it I used to have problems with it I used to have problems with it, but less and less because I think the work has to continue
42:40
and it has to live and it cannot be kept in a cage you know, it cannot you can only do it when it's defined already when you have defined, when there is a book or when there was an exhibition or whatever after that I think you are again free to reuse it and quality, how do you define quality maybe first of all for yourself
43:00
how do you define quality because if there is not any more an issue of quality, anybody is a follower so I guess it's important for you as an author how do you define that, for yourself it's not a much different answer than the one before
43:21
it's all in the sequence it's the sequence of the works it's consciousness it has to have I think quality basically means that the work that you make now has some reverberation to the work that you did before and most probably has reverberations to the work that you will do after
43:41
next to that there is a lot possible and is that maybe what sometimes you are not sure if it has reverberations to before certainly not after, because nothing came after and if there is something came after it seems like a correction and that's weird I mean that he made that and then all of a sudden 10 years later
44:02
I'm not part of the canon I need to make this because he knew he was sick so he knew he was going to die so then he makes that book almost as if to say hey guys if you think I didn't produce anything anymore in Europe that's not true, I made that is that what he might have done I took some
44:22
old work out and published it much later well yeah that work essentially I mean not so much this, but literally his setting here yeah because there is no work of the red landscapes it doesn't have a book which is also I find also strange
44:41
in his literal work in his literal way of working with books as a kind of output that that work is then kept out somehow it makes it intriguing of course it makes it an interesting point and it makes it also an important thing to look at
45:00
something was there that either he was not happy or he was not sure or didn't know how to put it or maybe he didn't want to fit a focus on this book book production after all being able to do projects
45:20
which could be out of the book I think that's also to be yes I think it's a ok so last question before to round up metropolitan architecture, I mean you mentioned it in the very beginning in the very simple terms you say you know the early work of
45:40
the American work of Balds is covering the even covered field in all his guises, the late work of Balds is metropolitan architecture, I mean you did not say it like this but you talked about these two very different topics, you said the city but maybe that's that what about it?
46:02
Would it be a valuable hypothesis? I mean it's basically where he lived he lived in the landscape he lived in the city you photographed the city somehow it's much more difficult to represent the city than the landscape for him, but it's unclear to me
46:21
if that's because he's born grew up in the landscape and therefore he's accustomed with it but this isn't really true for us because to be honest he was of course living in the states but I would argue he probably lived in the city in the states and not necessarily there when he photographed Park City, he wasn't living there I mean maybe as a kid he was living
46:41
I moved to the city when I was 18 but before I lived in the countries or in a village I can still more easily understand the landscape than I can understand the city it's not the matter of how long you were in a certain
47:01
spot or I think it just has to do with where your rooms are in that sense Are these photographs like this, this series, the last series are these unique? I mean almost photograph No, but maybe Tillman still did much Yeah, ok, that's a good reference
47:20
Much before I mean Balz did it earlier It's very Tillman's you say that's the photographer you think of No, now I see, only when you showed Show this, yeah I thought that's really a kind of So this is Tillman's photo What's that? There's also Paul Graham I think which is more
47:40
analytical towards the works he made in Japan or I think he also built up a restaurant for other people It's also Italian somehow Italian color photography it was much more like this than German color photography for instance
48:00
He has been working a lot in Italy So more than what he let people know but there was also this who was a curator at the CCA for a short time and he also died very young he was 37
48:21
and both coming to Italy in Venice for example where Vanessa Marghera was done which is very so if we start from the 70s which they works, that could look very apocalypse because it's very apocalyptic
48:43
in this case Yeah and it's even more than the ones in Venice and Marghera because he's talking about the exploitation of everything how the human being has exploited the entire planet basically and he found that in Venice because basically
49:02
he has been invited there and later he could leave there but it's more catastrophic than at the beginning that under a formal point of view it could look like more about catastrophe because they are black they are higher
49:21
so it's a kind of isn't it again pictures who have to compete with television images with video images, with MTV and we were talking 91, 92 I mean you need to make much more powerful images so he's following I think so yeah he tries to react
49:41
I mean if you look at his his portrait in the back yeah I mean you look at him you can somehow understand the glamorous boy the Duran Duran yeah he befriended Jean Nouvel in the early
50:00
90s he took pictures of the what is it, the restaurant the hotel, St. James there's a picture of him in the hotel St. James in the bathroom you can find it on the internet and I don't know what happened with these pictures and I don't have an idea of which he exactly took, but he did pictures for Jean Nouvel
50:22
and there was cocaine oh yeah lots of horizontal mirror surface lots of horizontal mirror surface can you click on that can you connect that I have a picture I have a picture of him in the
50:41
I have more grammars but okay, I mean does it make sense I mean what is it in pictures yeah it says it all what else to say
51:14
after this nothing anymore
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