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Kathrin Burmester works in photography, film and video.
Her interests lie in the image produced and its means of production. Whether still or moving imagery, Burmester leverages the visual properties of the medium she’s working with to walk the fine line of attraction and estrangement. Her photographic images at first seduce the viewer but upon closer examination the images literally fall apart, alienating the viewer from his initial expectations. Ultimately, Burmester is engaged in an investigation of the aesthetics of underlying power structures – importantly including the underlying structures and power of the used medium itself.

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The collages let us in on how a constructed and manipulated reality is represented in today’s news photographs and how these photographs become part of the sensationalist agenda of the mass media. However, something else occurs. The difficulty of pinning down the subjects of the individual images creates a peculiar visual effect. The images resemble mirages and are lent an almost mythological character. But while the viewer might get caught up in the mysterious new image, one is not able to get away from the sign of its construction. We are not looking at “reality” but at a digital reproduction that can be experienced and interpreted in its own right. The outlines of the individual images are never concealed, drawing attention to the source material and the underlying construction of the collage - revealing not only the sum but also its parts.

News Collages
Kathrin Burmester’s News Collages are images created from a day’s worth of online news photographs. By methodically collecting and then compositing the photos a new image is formed that is notable in its ability to slow down the immediacy of photojournalistic imagery. As the individual photographs blend together they form a new image that is at once an image of collapsed imagery and an image where unrelated details strangely fall into place.




Images:


1 – NY Times 04/08/07 (Sol), 2007, digital c-print, 17”x22”


2 – NY Times 05/21/07 (Flowers), 2007, digital c-print, 17”x22”


3 – NY Times 04/11/07 (Baseball), 2007, digital c-print, 17”x22”

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