ASTRID BUSCH

Astrid Busch OPENING 29.01.2007, 6pm 30.01. - 10.03.2007 Can a photograph tell a story? What can we learn about the people in the image? What secrets remain impenetrable to the viewer? The Berlin photographer Astrid Busch explores these questions in her first solo exhibition: How to concentrate a sequence of events into a single photograph through the staging and composition of the image? How to simultaneously capture the essential moment of heightened tension? In contrast to a film still, there is no image before or after the picture with a photograph, no narrative thread. One picture must carry the scene. Through the artist's familiarity with the repertoire of cinematic codes, Busch's images have a filmic quality, but what is actually taking place remains a mystery. The people in her photographs seem like extras waiting on the sidelines during a shoot for their next appearance or like people frozen in the middle of an everyday activity. It is not clear if it is a performance, what role they are playing, or whether they are simply being themselves. At the same time, Busch manages to invest her images with an uncanny feeling-a sense of foreboding-through a precise application of light, which makes the portrayed individuals appear very differently than they would in a normal portrait. How is she able to create this sense of confusion in her photographs? One photograph alone would hold the clue, if there were only a trail to follow. However, the actions in her scenes do not seem to lead anywhere. There is no "deed" than has been done, nor is there an indication of what there is to uncover. It is precisely this ambiguity, this secret, which Busch evokes in her work-leaving the viewer alone to confront the tension that infuses the image.