Berlin, 4 March 2011

Good day,

I think out of courtesy I should first introduce myself. My name is Welfhard Kraiker, as you can see on the invitation.

When Karin Székessy asked me if I would be able to say a few words at the opening of her exhibition here in this beautiful gallery of Johanna Breede’s, I was only too happy to say yes. I felt honoured.

Karin Székessy and I have known each other for quite some time. We have worked together and laughed a great deal at the same time. She certainly knows how to laugh.

Even at her own little misfortunes. But that is once again typically hanseatic. Even if she feels most at home in the South of France. If you have ever been there, in her and Paul Wunderlich’s hideaway, you will understand immediately what I mean, it is literally an insight.

And that’s what it is about here. About seeing. On the one hand, there is how the photographer sees things and on the other how we, the observers, see things. They are not necessarily two sides of the same coin. They are two completely different processes. And we never know if these assumed parallel processes will, in fact, at some time finally converge, perhaps even before infinity. That’s what makes looking at pictures so exciting. And so we are obliged to rely on what we perceive. However, with knowledge, you see better.

The title of this exhibition is “Girls in the Studio” - if my limited knowledge of French does not deceive me. But the word “studio” should not be taken literally. Karin Székessy transforms all and any environment into her “studio”.

The models have been photographed in a variety of apartments, and in fact in her studio in Hamburg, in the half-completed rooms of the property in Provence, or almost hidden in the green of a non-identifiable landscape. The space around the models she photographs is as immediate and precise as the gesture and expression of the models themselves. And they are not really models, but - as usual - women she has “found”.

Finding the right models is a truly wearisome process, as I myself came to learn on some occasions. Karin Székessy has a very clear idea of the image she wants to take with the girls, as is clear from the pictures here. That’s how she begins with her photographs of them.

Rita is one of the models she uses time and again. Pale and old-fashioned in a wonderfully refreshing way. With her cherry mouth and slightly reddened nose, she cavorts around as part of the surroundings chosen by Karin Székessy, or maybe the word “embrace” would be more apt here. Sometimes Rita’s surroundings, or what embraces her, are “just” a deep shade of black, as can be found on the invitation - but what a black!

I am by no means an art historian, just a retired communications designer, or more simply, a graphic artist, as they used to be known, and that is why I am wary of using art history terminology.
Nevertheless, it cannot be done without some history. You will find over 40 years of nude photography in these rooms. And, rest assured, it is a sample. Karin Székessy is an unusually - and forgive me for sounding like a teacher - an unusually diligent artist. She works at a speed that is breath-taking, and sometimes I’ve asked myself what she’s really up to, there’s nothing there. But there always was “something” there. Astonishing!

That is true for all her photographic work. Her magical landscapes and still-lifes, her penetrating portraits of famous artists and writers, but also her pieces of photojournalism following in the footsteps of George Sand and Uwe Johnson, with polished texts by Fritz. J. Raddatz. Or the piece she did just after the opening of the wall on Jewish life in the past, or what is still left of it, in the Scheunenviertel in Berlin.

And, last but not least, the photographs of Paul Wunderlich’s many sculptures. Sometimes you don’t really know what you would prefer: the photographs of the sculpture or the sculpture itself. Of course, the best would be if you could have both.

There is something else, I find, being now completely subjective: I shall be wary of being objective, it doesn’t matter what you can read in or out of these pictures, there is something free about them, if not liberating, but that is perhaps being a little over-dramatic.

Something free, being liberated from whatever. They, the pictures, the people in them, are sovereign, look relaxed and look at you full in the face. That is what impresses me, it shows how freely and naturally she communicates with the women.

This being liberated and independent can be explained, if there is any need, by Karin Székessy’s independent spirit. She has never followed any trends or fashions, has never tormented us with so-called experiments, which for the most part only serve to show the absence of an idea, an attitude, whether in the dark room or now on the computer as well.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that her view of the world has not changed, as the pictures here show. But it is always a matter of finding and inventing form. And she is in this respect, God knows, inexhaustible and if we are talking about creativity, then God would know, wouldn’t he?

Many of the pictures are so beautiful, if I may allow myself this vague and unprofessional term, I wish that one picture were many because there is so much to gladden the eye in the one photograph, beside and on top of one another, it is hard to take it all in. There are areas in these pictures which deserve to be a picture in their own right. Fortunately, Karin Székessy doesn’t work that way. It is the picture as a whole that matters to her.

But that’s what happens when you start looking a little closer. We make discoveries.

Something else. All good photographs have a before and after. That may sound a little esoteric but it is not meant that way. It is only silly that you cannot actually see this before and after, as it is in the end not really there. But you can sense it. Not clearly, and probably differently from one person to another. But stories can be told, and it is that that makes these photographs here also so outstanding. These pictures tell us stories if we so wish. That is precisely Karin Székessy’s narrative gift.

Before I finish, I shall make use of a plagiarism. Such things are justifiably forbidden, but as I shall be using a part of a text in one of the many catalogues of Karin Székessy which I wrote myself, then that will be allowed.

“The question is often asked where, amidst the full range of her work, the main focus of Karin Székessy’s work really lies. I shall attempt to answer that question but will only create confusion:

Karin Székessy is not just a photographer of nudes, she’s that, too. She is not just a still-life photographer, she’s that, too. She is not just a landscape photographer, she’s that, too. She is not just a portrait photographer, she’s that, too. I’m afraid then we must just come to terms with her having a multiple personality.”

One thing more I should like to add is that I find the pictures here hung sensitively and grandly. My full respects to the gallery.

In conclusion, for anyone who may not have realised already, these few words have been an attempt at a small, modest declaration of love for Karin Székessy and Paul Wunderlich, and for the work of these two wonderful people.

I wish you and myself a wonderful evening.

Some thoughts inspired by Lessing’s Laocoon on the art of Karin Székessy by Max Bense

“The beauty that is communicated to us from physical objects is subject to general laws that may relate to several things; to actions and thoughts just as much as to external appearance.” (Laocoon, 1766)

Looking at the photographs by Karin Székessy might inspire you to write a new Laocoon which would have to take as its subject less “the limits of painting and poetry” than the differences and similarities that exist between painting and photography and the transitions from the one art form to the other. Karin Székessy has shown herself to be a complete mistress of her art in theory and in practice. It can be taken as read that she is interested in all theoretical investigations regarding her work, as well as in all the various possibilities of the statement by Lessing quoted above. As we shall see, moreover, the thematic aspect of her photographs: the setting, the composition and the selection of the objects: contribute emphatically to theoretical considerations since, behind the concrete aesthetic object, is displayed the reflection of an abstract aesthetic design.

This leads us directly to the second element of what is so astonishing. The landscape, in German a feminine noun, is, as photographed by Karin Székessy, a hardly decipherable sculpture as it has been taken in three dimensions. I have had, pars pro toto, two quite personal experiences working together with Karin Székessy. One was a journey, a piece of photojournalism, which later came out as a book, following in the footsteps of the complex novelist Uwe Johnson. This "qualified" native of Mecklenburg spent his whole life singing the praises of the whispering flat expanses of where he grew up, the silent lakes, the secluded river Darß, the usually calm Baltic Sea. And, in a second period in his life when he chose New York to be his second home, he called the Hudson a river Darß whispering in a foreign language. Just doing that, following in his footsteps and putting it into words, was not easy. When I then asked Karin Székessy with her camera to bring to life for her part, with my manuscript in my hands, this highly complicated fictional collage, something totally and completely astonishing was the result. She actually managed to create a homogenous landscape from Johnson’s slightly artificial and forced identification, something so admirably harmonious that, on her showing me her photographs, I was constantly asking myself whether what I was seeing was Mecklenburg, the river Darß or the Hudson. She had re-created a literary epic in her own fashion. I should perhaps add that Uwe Johnson, just like Flaubert before him with Madame Bovary, wrote his four-volume novel “Jahrestage” [Anniversaries] from the perspective, with the voice and with the feelings of a woman (his wife).

The creative rendering of the female body has always been a male domain. The unique erotic thread that connects the model and the male photographic artist has resulted in the formation of masterworks. But images of female nudes as the result of woman behind the camera are rare indeed. One photographer who does such work, Karin Székessy, has found her own style of doing so. To achieve this photographically is more difficult than with a brush or pencil, because in photography, the nature of nakedness always tends to push itself into the foreground, and needs a sensitive eye to turn faces into fiction, yet still demonstrate truth.

Karin Székessy is the wife of the eminent painter and sculptor Paul Wunderlich, with whom she often collaborates, yet Székessy maintains her own individuality. With the magic of her camera mastership, she creates eroticisms that convey the pleasure she finds in beauty and its transformation into two dimensions. She does not portray professional models, but only young woman who please her and who sometimes simultaneously inspire her and her husband. In her work, she emphasizes the perfection of the torso, the grace of the limbs and the harmony of the forms.

By occasionally hiding the faces of her models, she makes the personal features disappear, but the general effect is a picturesque gestalt. All her images are flattering provocation, filled with the stimulating element of the stiffened poses, as in excitingly arrested movement. They are declarations of love for her own gender, not in a lesbian fashion but in a truly human sense. They conjure the fantasies of the onlooker, males in particular. For these reasons, these words are a declaration of love from a man for Karin Székessy’s photoraphic art.

Let us look more closely at some of her images: A woman sits in the half circle of a landing, nestled among a building’s staircase, her only attire being one long black glove – an unexpected, nearly surrealist encounter without reason, legs arranged invitingly apart. Another subject is streched languishing across a couch, hiding her head; another lies backwards in darkish surroundings, lifting her beautiful legs upright against a wall, thus revealing an immaculate build. All these apparitions seem very present, yet unattainable. A young woman, sculpted between light and shadow, becomes a snakelike configuration from hips to fingertips. She openly flirts with the viewer, revealing herself but shielding her face with her arms and hands. Posing young woman in the sidelit area of a home passage is another welcome motif. The serve upright and horizontal lines of the architecture converge to the point of planned attention with masterly instinct. Thus, the softness of female contours prevails, arresting the viewer.

What are the secrets of Karin Székessys results and successes? What is unique about the photographer’s art? To begin with, it is the fresh variety of her ideas and staging craft. Indeed, all her images are theatrically conceived and executed, whatever liberties she allows the young woman. Many self-constructed ’’events’’ take place in the eclectic environment of her home or her studio, which contains few props. These ’’events’’ also occure in nearby open spaces such as gardens, among trees. Often a wideangle lens and a controlled blur complete the exquisite final effect. She inspires the models to move, gently guiding them to be themselves and to let go of their inhibitions.

Fantasy, imagination, a feeling for elegance and yet the utmost concentration in the act, a mixture of pleasure and play, but in the end just hard work – these ingredients contribute to Karin Székessy’s brilliant oeuvre. She conjures magic out of matter, particulary in her black-and-white photographs, turning the tangible nearness of a bewitching figure into an even more exciting colorless abstraction. The living graces have vanished; their romantic essence in tender reflection is all that remains.

All of this illustrates the wide range of Karin Székessy’s creative abilities, of her endless striving for perfection and of her search for fascinating new expressions. Her oeuvre bears witness to a truly gifted camera artist, whose images enrich our lives.

It took some time before the first pure landscape photographs of Karin Székessy became reality. The impetus was consideration of the work of a painter and a poet, the still greatly underestimated Hans Peter Feddersen and Theodor Storm. Both artists led the photographer to the West coast of Schleswig-Holstein, to the North Sea, to the marshes and the dunes, to the mudflats. When the first photographs were taken - it was around 1976/77, the second sequence of North Sea pictures followed in 1988 - Karin Skézessy had mastered the medium but didn’t let this allow her to become complacent. As she once laconically remarked at the success of the results she achieved first time, you have to do something to fight the boredom, you have to think of something. Something to fight the boredom: that meant in this case travelling to Sylt when the weather was, as you might imagine, at its worst, between winter and spring, when the sky is grey, making every contour indistinct and apparently reducing all light phenomena to melancholy. It seems that it was precisely these uninviting conditions that gave her the required impetus.

For a long time, Karin Skézessy did not feel colour to be a suitable medium for photography since using colour in photography at that time ran counter to her belief that a photographic image only achieves perfection when it has been worked on in the dark room and that, therefore, the photographer’s handiwork there must be a final part of her own work. It was the difficulty in handling colour separations that stood in her way. Chance came to her aid in the 60s. The owner of a gallery wanted to edit together the painters he represented with their graphic work. This could not be so easily achieved with photographic prints as with collotypes. It was in this way, after experiments with another reproduction medium, the screen print, had proved unsatisfactory, that the first colour collotypes were created: not mere reproductions but interpretations of the images with the help of colour. The colouring was not realistic but freely chosen. It was common for Karin Székessy to print two such colours one on top of the other. As a collotype does not lend itself to being produced in large editions, copies of the individual images were limited to a manageable number: generally 100 prints. It was not easy and became harder and harder to find workshops capable of producing good-quality collotypes. A company in Lübeck closed down directly after Karin Székessy had her first collotypes produced there. Today, it is the printers Matthieu in Switzerland, who can still produce these demanding pictures using this technique, whom she works with, the same printers with whom Paul Wunderlich prints his lithographs.

It was not by chance that the first exhibition, which Fritz Kempe organised for the young photographer at the Hamburg State Media Centre, presented picture reportages from London and “contemporaries” from Paris. She would still love to take on such commissions today - that she does not receive any at present: perhaps because clients lack the necessary imagination: Karin Székessy takes in her stride. “Okay, then” is all she has to say on the subject. Such brief, composed, apt and usually casually expressed comments typify her perception of herself. As much as photography determines her life and as little as she might want to give it up after decades of intensive work, she has not turned it into an ideology, i.e. she is the one in control and she does not let it control her.

Nudes

Male nudes only interest Karin Székessy in conjunction with a female counterpart, as a portrait of a couple. A woman appreciates female eroticism. The self-preoccupation of the models, with no thought of somehow being in competition with one another while on display, leaves no room for crude voyeurism. They are complex images, sophisticated in their depth, poetic and slightly melancholic daydreams, with, and I quote, “partly objectively aestheticised bodies in soft daylight, bodies with limbs like worry stones, images in which even sexually attractive features such as the breasts, bottom or thigh are represented non-aggressively, without any hint of come on, take me if you can." Their stylisation runs counter to the banality of mere nakedness. I quote again: “Any form of naturalism is the enemy of an aesthetic nude photograph”. The unreal paleness of the white bodies is a further means of abstraction. Fritz Kempe, who appreciated and encouraged early on Karin Székessy’s photographic talent, described the deliberate manipulation as follows: “It is quite clear from first glance that Karin Székessy’s nude photographs are staged. What she seeks to achieve is not alleged naturalism but conscious artificiality. But she doesn’t just manipulate the girls, she also manipulates photographic techniques: her lens lengthens the extremities, distorts the perspectives, alienates as her colours do, which are rarely flesh-coloured but, with filtering, colour anti-naturalistically, esoterically unreal".

If you want to find the entrance to the rooms where Karin Székessy’s pictures are displayed, you will need to prepare yourself for a long search. You will have to pass through the agonisingly overcrowded rooms in which are displayed the dismembered, broken, tortured bodies that the previous century - as the age of photography - has preserved and passed on to our eternal shame. It is a walk through pictorial hell and only a few have the stomach to stay the course. If you then, after the exhaustion and torture of seeing without comprehension all that we have done - and daily still do, still have the courage to be faced with bodies as they were once envisaged, then you need only enter the shadowy room that lies next-door to heaven. It is here that you will find Karin Székessy’s studio. You should first pause, then slowly adjust to the twilight and forget what you have just seen. You should surrender yourself to the peculiar melancholy that permeates this silent room. Are you yourself the reason for this melancholy? If you have just been appalled by the great wounds man has inflicted on man, then you will now be faced with great wonders: you will see bodies that have not yet been deformed in any way. If you just felt unbridled rage seeing the misery we create daily without being able to understand it, shame will now possess you that we have allowed this misery to happen and still continue to do so. But we shouldn’t talk about it because the people we meet would not understand us. They know the misery and the shame just from hearsay. From people like us. Of course, even the female creations in Karin Székessy’s studio suspect that they are mortal. But we should avoid telling them that it is indeed so. We should remain silent and stand still for a moment. We shouldn’t utter the sentence: “What kind of a world are you really living in?” After a prolonged period of time, we should silently leave the studio again with its esoteric view of everyday life. On tip-toe. Under no circumstances should we mention that death is waiting in the neighbouring rooms.

We shall begin chronologically with a sequence of photographs from the years around 1966. The theme is Germany, or to be more precise, the Germans. It is clear from these pictures that Karin Szekessy first started as a photojournalist. But the hard realism of this profession does not come through these photographs completely; it is absorbed by a coolness that comes with distance and by a hint of poetic reflection, which does not cut out even the evil snapshot from the human context. Szekessy’s “Germans” always remain familiar to us; they don’t change into large voracious animals, into decision makers who only understand success – into any sort of caricature, in other words. That has perhaps something to do with the unpretentious truth of these pictures, which give the appearance of being picked up by chance from a wealth of observations. That is why they are never isolated images or made into an absolute; no typical German has been visually pulled out of the hat to be mercilessly exposed. Rather, there is a calm context to all the images, which is present even in each individual picture. What Karin Szekessy has captured is somehow familiar to us all.