Seen with my own Eyes Self portraits, 1971 – 2005
Photographic diaries are a central thread running through my artistic work since 1971, including visual representations of myself and my surroundings as well as the narrative. They are produced wherever I live. Since my film studies at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1978–79, I have also used the medium of photography to create “Erinnerungsrahmen” (Memory Frames), which represent ‘still’ films about people and places from my life. As in a diary, experiences and everyday images are photographically recorded within the form of a ‘picture frame’ and combined into a story.
The German film theorist Claudia Luedtke wrote about these works: “These series of images resemble short film sequences, composed of a respective row of still frames, ‘film stills.’… These ‘still films’ differ from classic cinema by their absence of movement, as well as by the fact, that Weimann’s ‘films’ describe a cycle without beginning or end, thus ignoring a limitation, set upon the typical, linear course of a cinema film. Weimann’s “Erinnerungsrahmen” are related to avant-garde cinema, which dissolves the antagonism between photography and film, between static and movement…”
Excerpt from my diaries Berlin, 2 September 1984 …i understand this endless stream of images, this flowing forward in a living process from one picture to the next, as feminist in the sense of continuous production, without beginning and end – it is my living, thinking and working principle…
Claudia Luedtke continues: “Mirrors and water merge in her photographic works. By experimenting with a reflecting tube in front of the camera’s lens at the Royal College of Art in London between 1971 –1972, Weimann achieves wave-like patterns, which resemble the concentric water circles that appear after having thrown a stone. In her photo series “Erinnerungsrahmen” (Memory Frames), she has repeatedly captured reflecting water-surfaces – palm trees, buildings, and the photographer’s head are mirrored in “Arabischer Brunnen” (Arabian Fountain, 1997) at the Villa Aurora; the glassy surface of the Liffey River in Dublin doubles the surroundings in “Regen und Nebel” (Rain and Fog, 1991), while raindrops on the window pane splinter the image of reality a thousandfold…”
Reflections are closely related to my childhood. Reflective water ditches surrounded the castle I grew up in and were equally fascinating for me as my mirror image in the windows of the trains that brought me to school. Since the beginning of my artistic carreer, I have continuously searched for identity – my own, which I first captured by drawing in front of the mirror, and that of others, which is reflected in my eyes and by the lens of my camera.
I conclude with a quote from the Mexican theorist Emma García: “A self-portrait is not always a faithful witness of reality, but rather a projection of different emotions. Women photographers implement their own personal language and perform their own rites at the moment of the ‘mise-en-scène.’ These images are true projections of the authors’ emotions, mirrored through the representation of their own bodies…”
Resume.
Gisela Weimann, 1943 born in Bad Blankenburg, Germany, lives in Berlin.
She studied painting at Universitaet der Kuenste Berlin, printmaking and experimental photography at the Royal College of Art, London, and film and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. The breadth and variety of her artistic forms of expression and working techniques range from painting and printmaking, photography and film, mail art, installations and environments to multimedia projects, performances and art in public spaces. She leaps over the boundaries between artistic genres by means of intercultural and interdisciplinary cooperation with artists from theatre, music and film, as well as with researchers from various disciplines.
Her work was shown extensively in Germany and internationally:
“Windows on Wilshire”, Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 1997; “PHotoEspaña 99”, Madrid, Spain; “Transatlantic Impulses“, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2005. Her multimedia projects include: “Aussen vor”, installation and performance at the New National Gallery Berlin for a première of the composer Franz Martin Olbrisch, 1989; “Garden of Memories”, installation and directing for a première of composer Witold Szalonek in the garden of the ‘Muzeum Kulczyckich’, Zakopane, Poland, 1996; “Opera for 4 Buses” / “Opera en Route”, an ongoing European multimedia art project in four mirrored city buses, premiered 2001 at Museum Island Festival, Berlin.
She has received numerous renowned grants and awards: Scholarship of the Cultural Senate of Berlin for Istanbul, 1991; Villa Aurora Residence Scholarship of the German Foreign Ministry, Los Angeles, USA, 1997 and the German Critics Prize for Visual Art, 2002.
For further information visit www.giselaweimann.de
