Use color in pictures,
keep background simple
Use color in pictures,
keep back-ground simple
Archival appropriation, drawing
I started ‚Use Color in Pictures, Keep Background Simple‘ by collecting old polaroid manuals. As I gathered more and more of these manuals, I became interested in the page titled „How to Take Good Pictures,“ which had been reprinted in virtually unchanged form for over four decades.
This page included four mantra-like phrases that seemed to dictate to photographers how they should see and represent the world: „Get in close to subject,“ „Add foreground interest,“ „Use color in pictures“ and „Keep background simple.“
I sought to explore the complex relationship between the hands depicted in the polaroid manuals and the language and imagery of these manuals that heavily quote Muybridge. I drew on large format photographic prints of the covers of these manuals and started to include different aspects of a photographic and iconic understanding of the world like viewfinders.
I started ‚Use Color in Pictures, Keep Background Simple‘ by collecting old polaroid manuals. As I gathered more and more of these manuals, I became interested in the page titled „How to Take Good Pictures,“ which had been reprinted in virtually unchanged form for over four decades.
This page included four mantra-like phrases that seemed to dictate to photographers how they should see and represent the world: „Get in close to subject,“ „Add foreground interest,“ „Use color in pictures“ and „Keep background simple.“
I sought to explore the complex relationship between the hands depicted in the polaroid manuals and the language and imagery of these manuals that heavily quote Muybridge. I drew on large format photographic prints of the covers of these manuals and started to include different aspects of a photographic and iconic understanding of the world like viewfinders.
help subjects relax – watch the background – include color – frame scenics carefully are guiding principles for good photography. They are taken from Polaroid manuals from 1957 onwards and form the basis of Rudi Weissbeck’s ongoing series of works. The “How to” short descriptions are illustrated by technical sketches and image examples, including motifs from equestrian sports, women smiling into the camera, father-and-son moments, holiday shots, and portraits of men in suits. They all spring from a white, heteronormative and privileged (image) world. Rudi Weissbeck reduces, collages, and dismantles the pictorial material in his partially with acrylic overpainted photo prints, depicting color scales, text excerpts, and hand postures. The camera object as the main actor of the original instructions was partly removed. What remains are outlines of hands, which through the act of tracing become representatives of (non-)actions in a double sense.
Always hold the camera steady when shooting.
In his artistic practice, Rudi Weissbeck critically examines the photographic discourse and image politics. In the 1870s,
the photographer Eadweard Muybridge used his camera to investigate the question of whether a galloping horse always had at least one hoof on the ground or whether all four were briefly in the air—and thereby for the first time captured the individual phases of the movement of a galloping horse in a picture. This moment marked not only the beginning of chronophotography, but also the most widespread misconception in photography about its truthfulness and evidentiary power.
Always hold the camera steady when shooting.
As an award for good pictures, tournament ribbons from horse riding adorn each of the works in the series. How to make good pictures? The question of the “good picture” in this case is not only a photo-technical one, but also an ideal one: it reflects the values and norms of a society that presents itself as heterogeneous and closed in Polaroid’s pictorial world. The question of a supposedly good and right life is echoing in the face of bourgeoisie, elitism and white privileges: If you do not follow the instructions, you will not get good pictures.
· Miriam Bettin
