In 1987 photographer Joachim Schmidt claimed polemically: “No new photographs until the old ones have been used up.”

Against the background of a constant demand for steady growth, innovation and originality, Re*creation addresses the double meaning of “re-creation” as “recovery” and “create anew”; reflecting on the relationship between production and leisure. On the one hand, pause, retreat, calm, and reflection resist production constraints – on the other hand, they are a prerequisite to develop something new.

The artists of the exhibition Re*creation appropriate existing pictures. The material in question comes from areas that we usually assign to the private. It has been detached from its original context, changed, annotated, and transformed both temporally and spatially. This recontextualization of the images reveals a social relevance in addition to the individual.

The appropriations challenge the relationship between private and public, reverse original and reproduction, reflect norms and instrumentalization, and play with control and self-determination; pushing the focus away from the image production to the distribution, reception, and interpretation of images.

© text fotograf festival #8