Camera Obscura Double Exposures

Stuttgart-Berlin
Przemek Zajfert – Marek Pozniak

In 1999, two artists who did not know each other until then founded a project called “Exchange in Process” to realise an exhibition in Wroclaw, Poland. For a poster design for the exhibition, a picture was to be taken with both artists. The distance did not permit this. So the first camera obscura was created, in which Zajfert mounted two holes for the first time – one for the exposure in Stuttgart, one for Berlin. The result of the double exposure was so interesting that the method has been constantly developed to this day. In 2000, exhibitions were held in Stuttgart, in 2001 in Warsaw. Subsequently, the Stuttgart – Wedding project was presented in Berlin. The largest project to date is being prepared: New York – Stuttgart – Berlin. What do Stuttgart and Berlin have in common? Little, that’s right. Two ambitious artists, Marek Pozniak and Przemek Zajfert, are building a bridge between the incompatible. Pictures from the Daimler stronghold and the metropolis on the Spree are arranged in such a way that they almost give the viewer the impression of homogeneity. They are supposedly coincidental products of photography, taken without the agreement of the photographers in these two fundamentally different places and united by the arbitrariness of a two-hole camera. In this way, the seemingly impossible becomes a functioning photographic entity of almost cosmic shape, intangible and yet existing.
Michael Hamann