Visible Storage

1simulacrum1:

anyone who says Ann Romney can’t understand struggle doesn’t realize how long it must have taken to find a plastic surgeon THAT good.

White Columns is proud to present the first New York exhibition of Roger Fritz’s production photographs taken on the set of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, Querelle (1982.) The exhibition has been developed in collaboration with VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin – where it was originally shown in January 2012.

The one-hundred and nineteen color images of Querelle on display were taken by Roger Fritz, a photographer, producer and performer who worked daily on Fassbinder’s set as both an actor and production documentarian. Originally shot as color transparencies Fritz’s photographs were previously known to exist only as Querelle – The Film Book (Schrimer/Mosel-Grove, 1982.) Published to coincide with the film’s release in 1982, the book reproduced Fritz’s production photographs in sequence and in parallel to excerpts of the film’s dialog. Their presentation at VeneKlasen/Werner and now at White Columns is the first time they have been publicly exhibited. Unlike film stills, which are sourced directly from filmed footage, production photographs are by nature a form of re-enactment; the action must be re-staged for the still camera. Fritz’s photographs mirror Fassbinder’s dynamic compositions, at times freezing the dramatic action and in other moments closing in on an actor’s face or an odd prop. The resulting images evoke the surreal drama and atmosphere of the film. They are uncomfortably beautiful and somewhat puzzling: as instances of documentary photography, Fritz’s photographs are thoroughly pure, honest and “true”; yet the scenes they portray were highly artificial, as “false” as anything seen in modern film.