GERHARD LANG - Invisible New York City

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II.

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[...] My composite photographs are not a duplication of what I saw in New York. Rather, these works show a different, an invisible New York. Only in these images do I recognise the true vitality of New York with all its shades of human warmth and bleakness, with its range of gentle and loud timbres. But it is precisely in this perceptibility that these works harbour their unfathomable quality. A sense of otherness emerges covertly from within the impenetrable, condensed visibility of the images. Hence, with even greater lucidity than any reality whose photographability gives it the impression of being unequivocal, they reveal that the phenomenon of the city, even for those who live in it, will always remain quintessentially unknowable.

[Excerpt from the special publication (Separatum): Invisible New York City, 2015]

For more information about previous composite photography work by Gerhard Lang:
- The Typical Inhabitant of Schloss-Nauses 1992/2000
- The Typical Marking of Farmer Jenni's Cow Herd in Schöntal

Thanks to:
Lucius und Annemarie Burckhardt Stiftung
Hessische Kulturstiftung
Prof. Dr. Stephan Weyer-Menkhoff

Translation: Matthew Partridge

Ill. I: Astor Place, 19th July 2012

Ill. II: West 34th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue, 26th November 2012

Ill. III: Lower Manhattan, first photo taken in front of Poets House, River Terrace, 7th August 2012

Ill. IV: Chambers Street between West Broadway and Broadway, 7th February 2013

Ill. V: Rockaway Beach, 9th September 2012