Urban Landscapes:

Historic Preservation and the new Berlin more   

Mediterranean Fragments - Figments from the Real World:

Italy in Transition more…

Gorges -:
Mountain stream in the Alps more…

Bohemia - Relics and Departure:

Springtime in Czech more…

Munich Media Marathon:

How to overcome the baser more…

NYC - Borough Park:

Jewish life in New York more…

Calabria:

Land of the Phaeakans more…

New features

Introduction

By Kai-Uwe Nielsen

Portfolio vs. medley

The main impetus for this website is to give an overview about the different aims and photographic features of my personal-work. I would like to give you more than just a medley of my œuvre. More   

The following pages show a great part of my personal work. As already described the classical, film based photography is my appropiate and beloved tool in creating timeless photographs. That doesn’t mean that I deny the powerful possibilities of digital photography and digital postproduction. The transformation of a fat old body into a slimline young model without any scalpel and collateral damages just by image processing via Photoshop is quite fascinating and a many of contemporariy photographers appreciate this easy mean. But the excessive application of correction options given by Adobe’s Photoshop sacrifices truth in photography. In my personal work I try to stay as a guarantor of the sincerity in photography.

Perhaps, you find some tim and look at the photo showcases.

These showcases onsists of different albums and photographic essays, some of them were produced in series over a longer period, some in only in two weeks. In the tradition of great american straight photography I used a model similar to the respected and admired storyteller and photographer Walker Evans. He is still the acme of social documentary photography. Like he, I am pursuing systematically and boldly a poetic definition of our present time experience (Lloyd Fonvielle in: Walker Evans , Aperture 1993). The concept of using series of photographs approved to be appropriate for a complex content. He himself refered to Eugene Atget, the already mentioned french photographer from the fin de siecle in Paris. His formative work on the years of depression in Amerika gives a perfect pattern to explore nowaday new countries and societies. The technical challenges are moderate since you need a car or just a pair of shoes to travel around and a camera. Evans was always keen on new and modern photographic equipement, but his technical combination of 35mm (LEICA or CONTAX) medium format (ROLLEIFLEX) and large format (DEARDORF field camera) proved to be the best choice (Jerry Thompson: Walker Evans at Work, London 1984). In spite of his latter use and trials with color film the black/while material in its abstracting form seems to fit with these themes quite better. Among his followers there were quite different personalities, like Robert Frank, Lee Friedlaender or Garry Winogrand to name only a few. One can draw a family tree with all the different branches of documentary photography, where Walker Evans is the root. It is worth to say that Henri Cartier-Bresson the gentleman photographer, in his way of photographing had a similar approach and sometimes an essential congruity. But the formal differences between both personalities predominate. The artistic tragedy and sobriety in Evans pictures have more weight. I hope you find a key in reading and enjoying these photographs.  More…