Richard Koenig--Artist Statement

For the last six years, I have been working with pictures that I re-photograph in one way or another--beginning with Inserts, through Koans, to Ambivalent Views, and beyond, to my most recent work, which I call Photographic Prevarications. By exploring photography's inherent tension between objective truth and subjective expression, I coax the viewer to question the nature of photography itself--by making them aware that they are looking at, and perceiving, a photograph, not looking at the subject matter of the photograph. As Roland Barthes would say of the latter, fairly normal, reaction to photography, "the referent adheres."

Several photographers and conceptual artists, those who work with visual conundrum and spatial riddles, have influenced me over the years--Robert Cumming, John Pfahl, Zeke Berman, Kenneth Josephson, and Jan Dibbets. In fact, I made a series of work as homage to Dibbets upon completion of my first year of teaching called After J.D. The anamorphic concept behind these pictures would come back later to inform Ambivalent Views.

With the body of work I call Inserts, I dealt with the passing of time and a reconstructed personal history. By the use of duplicative hanging prints, these works were meant to produce a conceptual echo, a sense of deja vu in the viewer. Koans used the same technique but focused on my body as subject matter to explore notions of existence, identity, and spirituality. I wanted to make visual koans--riddles that have no correct answer, but similar to a verbal koan, are something to be meditated upon as a way of getting away from pure reason.

The tactic of re-photography has continued in my more recent work--but with the inclusion of perspective and interpenetration of walls. In the former, the body of work I call Ambivalent Views, a large image is printed on paper after having been carefully distorted. This large print is then installed in a space and photographed from a privileged point of view. As a result, this square shape of the insert image tends to rise up and match the vertical surface of the picture plane. In terms of content, the inset image was a personal image seemingly projected onto the public space of the building in which I work.

All of these images are straight photographs--while Photoshop was used to distort the shape of things in the making of the paper prints, once made they are simply re-photographed in a straight manner. What is seen in these photographs actually existed in the room in which I documented these installations--they are not digital montage. For one exhibition however, Ambivalent Views, Installed, I showed the actual large paper prints. People could walk around the gallery and find the privileged point of view, but I find that the camera records it more accurately.

In my latest work, Photographic Prevarications, space, planes, and objects themselves are presented in such a way as to underscore photography's ability to tell untruths. This work began as a small series made in the corner of our gallery where planes intersect to extend to the space behind walls--or they tilt in such a way that is incongruent with the confines of the room. I continued this technique when I went to a residency in Rome where a faucet, radiator, or wall sconce from a space is photographed. These items are then reproduced as paper prints, after being carefully distorted. Taped to the wall and re-photographed in situ, these objects appear to defy the limitations of the room's floor plan.

The work has taken a different tack this summer in that I began to photograph myself and objects in a residential space, then created facsimiles in paper form and once again re-photographed them. With the work in Rome, the placement of the objects was designed to defy the room's space--here they are more logical, being reproduced where in fact they did exist.

By using these tactics, to emphasize the tension that exists within photography, play up its ability to dissemble, I have moved its emphasis from transparency to trickery. This in turn posits the viewer at a point where depiction and deception meet--and hopefully leaves them teetering between the two.

Richard Koenig
November 2005

For more information about Richard Koenig's Photographic Prevarications, click here