Gerhard WinklerFische und Cephalopoden

The story is told almost as simply as the concretely depicted motifs in the present book are presented to the eye. The moment that became a key experience for Gerhard Winkler and pointed the way ahead lies some thirty years in the past. On a foray through the market hall in Lisbon, the artist found he could no longer tear himself away from the sight and the beauty of the fish on offer there: sardines, hake and garfish, tuna and squid, and many more species besides, all in abundance, some laid out on ice, some ranged by kind on metal stands. Customers were meant to be lured in by the aesthetic appearance of the display – which is precisely what happened in his case. But there was more to it. He looked more closely and discovered for himself the beauty and individuality of the fish. Winkler works first and foremost with black-and-white film, the developed negatives of which provide the basis for his hand-made baryta prints; these are then hand-coloured with egg-tempera glazes in keeping with the real appearance of the animals. With this individual artistic method, which takes up historically tested procedures – the manner of colouring, too, goes back to methods of photographic post-processing in the nineteenth century – Gerhard Winkler enriches contemporary photography. As assuredly and as emphatically in their idiosyncrasy as each of his fish and cephalopods is presented to the eye, so enchanting, enigmatic and unaffected do they all appear.

Exhibition:
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne
3/9/2021 – 16/1/2022