What do you think?
Rate this book
Thomas Demand
German artist Thomas Demand occupies a singular position in the world of photography. Initially he took up photography to record his ephemeral paper constructions, but in 1993 he turned the tables by making constructions in order to photograph them. Demand begins by translating a preexisting image, usually culled from the media, into a life-size model he makes out of colored paper and cardboard. He recreates a room, a parking lot, a staircase, a landscape--then he photographs the model and destroys it. Demand's photographs appear at once compellingly real and strangely artificial. Since their subjects--handcrafted facsimiles of both architectural spaces and natural environments--are themselves built in the image of other images, the photographs are three times removed from the scenes they seek to depict. Combining craftsmanship and conceptualism in equal parts, Demand pushes the medium of photography toward uncharted frontiers. Given the cinematic quality of many of his photographs, it is not surprising that he has set some of them in motion, producing five 35 mm films. This comprehensive publication presents all of Demand's major works from 1993 to the present. It includes previously unpublished archival documentation, and offers compelling insight into his working process and the stories behind his pictures.
- GenresArt
144 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2005
71 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Eugenides
35 books10.4k followersJeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American author. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). The Virgin Suicides served as the basis of the 1999 film of the same name, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 7, 2023
À défaut de ne pas pouvoir trouver le bégaiement de l'histoire comme ouvrage suite à son exposition au Jeu de Paume, voici celui-ci.
Magnifique travail.
Bonsoir.
Magnifique travail.
Bonsoir.
September 24, 2013
"Demand's picture is of a model which, in turn, is about a model. In producing this work, Demand looked at Heinrich Hoffmann's archival photographs showing Hitler and Speer with the maquette for the national pavilion. In the 1930s Speer was in charge of plans to transform Berlin into Germania, the capital of the pan–Germanic state. Hitler supervised these plans closely, revealing his original ambition to be an architect. […] Toward the end of his life, Hitler spent a lot of time in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery toying with models for a master plan for Linz while Germany was falling apart" (Marcoci, pg. #15).
"Demand remarks, '[Vorhölzer] made very elegant buildings in the Bauhaus style, but with no ideology. […] But what's more, I grew up in a village where the post office had been built by Vorhölzer. I knew it like the back of my hand. One's experience of public architecture develops partly because of such seemingly insignificant places as post offices. For me, as a child, observing that place was highly instructive. Now there was suddenly a web of connections around this image, thanks to which my personal environment became linked up with public history'" (Marcoci, pg. #16).
"Leaving nothing to chance, the artist staged this image so that it appears to be both blatantly banal yet likely to provoke discomfort in the viewer. Since details that might otherwise explain the image are not provided, the viewer only experiences an incomplete suggestiveness that alludes to the work's meaning. The film theorist Peter Wollen observes that crime scenes present us with both an excess and a dearth of meaning, appearing prosaic on the surface, yet evoking a feeling of inexplicable dread and destruction" (Marcoci, pg. #20).
"Like his other pictures, Demand's construct is full of artifice. The even studio lighting, the sharp creases in the white pillow in the foreground, and the cold precision of the miscellanea found on the desk signal that this is not reality but a mock–up of it. Demand enfolds factual clues into the trompe l'oeil effects, which heighten the viewer's attention by making him doubt his first impressions of the image" (Marcoci, pg. #21).
"Poll was completed shortly after the elections, when the event was still fresh in the voter's minds. Demand says, 'I wanted to be so close to the real event that my picture of it and the media coverage would become indistinguishable'" (Marcoci, pg. #22).
"By relinking photographic inquiry to scientific devices that exceed human vision, Demand acknowledges his interest in the logistics of perception in an age when what is perceived is increasingly mediated by technology" (Marcoci, pg. #23).
"The source of this work [Escalator] is a video recording made by a closed–circuit security camera, which was used as evidence in the trial of the gang members. An invention of the late nineteenth century, the escalator was initially conceived as an amusement ride at Coney Island, but soon assumed its present function. Located primarily in transit zones and often monitored by cameras, it exercises control over individuals so that 'criminals who were hurrying a moment ago suddenly stand still and can easily be identified on the film recordings.' In Escalator, the camera, with its intent to provide information, underscores the complicity between photography, or, in this case, video, and disciplinary authority" (Marcoci, pg. #25).
"The direction of his interrogation into truth takes as its subject the media–based perceptions of reality. As we have seen, the certainty of this 'reality' is destabilized, however, as soon as an auxiliary reality—the world of paper and cardboard constructs—is detected. But since he never exhibits the paper mock–ups, we can never entirely conclude the former reality as an illusion. When looking at a Demand picture, the eye is subjected to the unrelenting act of having to decode two kinds of 'reality.' In this way, the artist reinscribes his documentary sources. The removal of figures, clinical handling, lack of detail, shallowness of depth, and cool and utterly uniform lighting call into question the pretense that such sources can tell the truth of the events they have in principle objectively documented. As such, it seems, Demand ensures that photography becomes a vehicle of consciousness as much as a form of testimony to seeing anew" (Marcoci, pg. #26).
"Demand remarks, '[Vorhölzer] made very elegant buildings in the Bauhaus style, but with no ideology. […] But what's more, I grew up in a village where the post office had been built by Vorhölzer. I knew it like the back of my hand. One's experience of public architecture develops partly because of such seemingly insignificant places as post offices. For me, as a child, observing that place was highly instructive. Now there was suddenly a web of connections around this image, thanks to which my personal environment became linked up with public history'" (Marcoci, pg. #16).
"Leaving nothing to chance, the artist staged this image so that it appears to be both blatantly banal yet likely to provoke discomfort in the viewer. Since details that might otherwise explain the image are not provided, the viewer only experiences an incomplete suggestiveness that alludes to the work's meaning. The film theorist Peter Wollen observes that crime scenes present us with both an excess and a dearth of meaning, appearing prosaic on the surface, yet evoking a feeling of inexplicable dread and destruction" (Marcoci, pg. #20).
"Like his other pictures, Demand's construct is full of artifice. The even studio lighting, the sharp creases in the white pillow in the foreground, and the cold precision of the miscellanea found on the desk signal that this is not reality but a mock–up of it. Demand enfolds factual clues into the trompe l'oeil effects, which heighten the viewer's attention by making him doubt his first impressions of the image" (Marcoci, pg. #21).
"Poll was completed shortly after the elections, when the event was still fresh in the voter's minds. Demand says, 'I wanted to be so close to the real event that my picture of it and the media coverage would become indistinguishable'" (Marcoci, pg. #22).
"By relinking photographic inquiry to scientific devices that exceed human vision, Demand acknowledges his interest in the logistics of perception in an age when what is perceived is increasingly mediated by technology" (Marcoci, pg. #23).
"The source of this work [Escalator] is a video recording made by a closed–circuit security camera, which was used as evidence in the trial of the gang members. An invention of the late nineteenth century, the escalator was initially conceived as an amusement ride at Coney Island, but soon assumed its present function. Located primarily in transit zones and often monitored by cameras, it exercises control over individuals so that 'criminals who were hurrying a moment ago suddenly stand still and can easily be identified on the film recordings.' In Escalator, the camera, with its intent to provide information, underscores the complicity between photography, or, in this case, video, and disciplinary authority" (Marcoci, pg. #25).
"The direction of his interrogation into truth takes as its subject the media–based perceptions of reality. As we have seen, the certainty of this 'reality' is destabilized, however, as soon as an auxiliary reality—the world of paper and cardboard constructs—is detected. But since he never exhibits the paper mock–ups, we can never entirely conclude the former reality as an illusion. When looking at a Demand picture, the eye is subjected to the unrelenting act of having to decode two kinds of 'reality.' In this way, the artist reinscribes his documentary sources. The removal of figures, clinical handling, lack of detail, shallowness of depth, and cool and utterly uniform lighting call into question the pretense that such sources can tell the truth of the events they have in principle objectively documented. As such, it seems, Demand ensures that photography becomes a vehicle of consciousness as much as a form of testimony to seeing anew" (Marcoci, pg. #26).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews