Benjamin KatzFleurs

Don’t forget your flowers, Monsieur Katz! In the life of a bouquet of flowers there is sometimes a photographer. And in the life of a photographer there are occasionally flowers. That is what happened to Benjamin Katz, and perhaps it had to happen to him of all people. All his life he has made portraits of artists. Thousands of portraits, not of thousands of artists, but of a few dozen all the same. There is no need to name them all. In any case there are more of them than one supposes. He discovered them before anyone else did. And after all the years in which he was there, after all the works he brought to light, some of which he was the first to see, the first to own, the first to show, he now leaves his flat, let us say: in the morning, on the day when he buys a bouquet of flowers at the market. This bouquet of the day, which he finds without effort, he carries up to his floor, puts it in a vase and lets it pose in his universe in the same place as always, on the hob in the kitchen; then he takes a photograph. Always the same photograph with the same lens, and because he repeats this procedure he obtains, no matter whether it is fine or foul outside, a sequence of days with flowers, like a calendar from the post office. Except that one does not count the days but merely notices a few changes. The flowers change, the flower water is changed, the photographer too changes a little, but the picture does not change, it always remains a bouquet. The picture does not capture identity. Rather alterity. An otherness withering towards uncertainty in its vessel. If one happens to know the name of the flower, not much is gained. The flower painters of old told whole novels in their pictures. The photographer’s flowers have less to report. They merely change, each in its own way, into themselves. And then they take their place in the round dance of all those flowers that one has always wanted to show before they wither. Faced with the photographer born in Antwerp, has anyone ever seen tulips disappear? At any rate, for as long as there have been roses, no one has ever seen a gardener die. Take a step back, old reader of magic formulas. It is only one bouquet among all the other bouquets. And only one photograph among all the other photographs. Do not disturb, memories in progress! (Eric Darragon in his text)

Exhibition:
Knust Kunz Gallery Editions, Munich, 6 – 29/2/2020