Peter Piller
I never was interested very much about finding traces of my German reality in photographs. I was occupied with photographs as mere images and the photographer as author with a distinctly visible personal style. My photographic socialization took place in a time in which priorities were put on stylistic features that stressed the distance of photographs from reality. Photographs were not to be mistaken with reality anymore.
In my surroundings a small depth of field or the use of fill in flash were the primary means to achieve this effect.
You could have seen here a sequence of images by Peter Piller …but now you can´t anymore,
I was asked by BILDKUNST.DE
to delete the images by
(these were the names spelled out)
Loretta Lux,
Man Ray,
Valie Export,
August Sander
Lotte Reiniger
and every other artist represented by them or to pay a fee for publishing their images.
They represent around 126 000 artists from around the world.
I am working on this blog for my fun,
and for the enjoyment of people interested in photography and art.
There is no income generated whatsoever by this site for me.
Many of the images I use here are floating all over the net,
other images I scanned to upload them to my blog.
To share them, to enrich the world with the work of artists I do admire.
No, my blog is not important.
But it is part of what I would call our common wealth.
I don´t think that I am the source of income losses for the artist,
or anybody else.
Art as part of everyday life,
art easily accessible by everybody without barriers and fees,
art as part of the free flow of thoughts and
communication.
But not in the case of artist represented by Bild-Kunst.
Peter Piller/ V
Peter Piller/ T
Peter Piller/ T
Peter Piller is not a photographer. He is an artist using photographs.
His “found images” are not marked by any artistic intentions wanting to be noticed , thus competing with the mere reproduction of reality.
Peter Piller wrote about his project ”From earth more beautiful”:
“2002 I took over a company’s estate consisting of about 20 000 aerial photographs. From 1979 to 1983 countless settlements were systematically scanned from plane flying at a low altitude to sell aerial photographs of single-family houses to the according house owners. On the backsides of the photographs the vendors noted with a ball point pen enlightening remarks like this: “No interest in images”, “From earth more beautiful”, “Wife wanted, but house too expensive”, “For this you get half a scooter”, “”Doing it by himself” or simply: ”Died.”
Repeated reviews of this archive lead me to the first groups of images and categories for the inventory. Examples are: “Sleeping Houses”, “Floral Bodies” or “ Human Before House”. A fourth, a fifth and a sixth review, going through the 18 containers full of yellowed prints and negatives brought to light what this book now summarizes.”
Peter Piller, Hamburg, in the summer of 2002
A Dirty Clouds
B End Of Street/ Turn-Around Area
C Projection Screens
D Temporary Homes
E Floral Bodies
F Cemeteries
G Paths
H Human Before House
I Birds
J Sleeping Houses
K Connecting Images
L Voyeur
N Single Image
P Tongues
Q Car Wash
R House/ Cavity
S Savings Banks
T Piles
U Playgrounds
V Lawn Mowing
W New Building/ Shell Of A Building
X Pool
Y Power Supply Lines
Peter Piller/ Q
Peter Piller/ Q
Peter Piller takes himself here into the role of an ethnologist who is trying to categorize the peculiarities of an alien tribe with the help of archive material. In his project I recognize, hardly filtered, my everlasting surprise about the dreary landscape of German settlements. Hardly filtered, that means: these images don’t reflect any desire for producing art.
The modality of choosing the criteria to categorize this archive refers dryly to the pseudoscientific manner of Peter Pillers approach and in the same time it also points out the comical ways home owners (I wouldn’t be less funny if I could call a home my own) are dealing with their dreams came true.
We can decide to ignore that what is surrounding us, or we can despair about it, and last but not least, we can notice the human comedy just to have moments of quiet amazement and laughter.
“From Earth More Beautiful” is a collection of similar, artless, almost boring photographs. This sentence sounds like crushing critique, but is absolutely not meant that way.
As Peter Piller puts the photographs out of the container into the white cube, he is using a similar strategy as Marcel Duchamp did with his urinal.
He inspires the viewer to an altered perception of the everyday, without manipulating or altering the “objects trouvées”. Those who have actually seen Duchamps “urinal” might know how beautiful this piece really is.
Peter Piller, that’s fine by me.
“From Earth More Beautiful” is a collection of similar, artless, almost boring photographs. This sentence sounds like crushing critique, but is absolutely not meant that way.
