"Berliner Blau" No. 05

Photogram, 300 x 65 cm

The color blue is often associated with the sky, with depth and breadth. Blue has a calming, cooling, clear, melancholic, mysterious, attractive, velvety, and fresh effect. It is also most people’s favorite color. Is this because we long for the sky?

Not only the blue of the sky changes constantly. The color of all things changes depending on the light that shines on them. Color is a sensory perception—it is created by how our brain interprets the light that hits our retina. We have developed this ability over the course of evolution. According to color researcher Axel Buether, we can only perceive blue as a blur because the cones responsible for perceiving this color are located on the outer edge of our eyes. Scientists and artists have repeatedly dealt with the color blue. Leonardo da Vinci described blue as immaterial, as a mixture of sunlight and the "blackness of world darkness". For Yves Klein, blue was “the invisible becoming visible”. He believed it embodied "the undefinable and the infinity of space". Early in his career, he declared the sky to be his first intangible work of art.

My work is driven by the polarity between matter and immateriality. It is created in the realm of experimental photography. Unlike conventional photographs which require a camera, I expose objects directly onto the photo paper. An object is illuminated and at the same time transformed into a lens through which the light is refracted. The more transparent an object is, the greater this effect. For this series I exposed many different pieces of broken glass on long lengths of photosensitive fabric. Each piece of glass is different in thickness and shape, refracting the incoming light rays in a different way. This process leaves traces on the fabric; it is no longer reversible and cannot be replicated. The matter of objects and the immateriality of light combine in the moment of exposure.

The technique I use is called cyanotype. This is an historic photographic technique that creates bright cyan blue tones. Light-sensitive iron salts form blue crystals when exposed to light. The areas where a negative or object lay and were therefore exposed to little or no light remain more or less white. Sharpening and blurring become apparent depending on how far the object to be exposed is from the photosensitive surface.