Daniela Finke

“Polo on Snow”

6. January – 18. February 2012

Daniela Finke travels the world to capture fantastic moments. Her images cover everything, from the famous Polo matches in St. Moritz to the beach stations in Miami. She makes her photos unique with her amazing digital applications, creating digital photo art of high standards. Her work is represented by international galleries.

Installation view:

“Waking Night”

“Baywatch”

Artist Q&A’s

Daniela Finke

Your photographs have some stylistic features in common with painting and it can be difficult to identify the works as photography. What meaning do you put in to that difficulty?

The application of modern technology in art breaks up categories. Human perception is strongly linked to categories, such as photography and painting. However, when reorientation is demanded, the categories get confused, and a new terminology is defined. The initial body of my work is always a photo, taken either analogue or digitally. It serves to document the moment. Digital tools are applied later in the creation process. The result then shows the known resemblance with painting. This break up, causing some irritation with the onlooker at first, will necessarily challenge him or her to deal with what is there.

Your photographs are placed between fiction and fact. What image do you want to create of reality?

When you look through the lens you always take a purposeful glance at the world. With this glance you make a choice, you cut off, you keep a distance. The eye of the artist determines the moment when the photo is shot. My processing work, starting with the decision about the detail within focus, takes the visual motif out of its original context and transforms it into an object with a more common or general meaning. The final picture then offers a pattern to the onlooker, a model, which remains sketchy, therefore allowing an individual, associative interpretation. You might call it a questioning of reality by changing the focus towards something more artificial.

Your ability to create a soft-focused expression and blurred outlines gives the viewer a feeling of being confronted with a false or dreamlike reality. Do you have a critical agenda with doing that? Or can you just describe your reason for doing it?

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What kind of reaction or reflection would you like to create in the viewer in the confrontation with your works of art?

For me these two questions pick up on the one on “fact and fiction”.

I started back in the eighties to experiment with digital media. My “playground” was the good old Commodore C64, later the Amiga and the Atari, until finally the first Apple was available on the market. Each new media means new possibilities for expressing yourself as an artist. By now there has been a seemingly radical change from analogue to digital photos.  Let me therefore ask back: With what eyes do we meet photos and films, which surround us daily? How do we bear the massive flooding with images, pictures? Are we already threatened with the potential loss of all human memory and concentrated perception? The oscillation between the image and its representation, the purposeful reduction and modification of form and outline of my initial photographic material, is an essential part of my work process.  Everything that could cause the onlooker to be detracted is eliminated and an approximation to the archetypical is put in its place. Through this process of purification towards a schematic representation, the onlooker is enabled to approach the picture slowly and enter a process of communication with the perceived representations by becoming conscious of his/her associations. It seems like a paradox that the personal view sharpens by being offered a fuzzy perspective.

You travel a lot and your artworks come in to existence in the meeting with other cultures. In a way you become the binder between the well known and ‘the other’. Do you recognize that or how would you describe your role as an artist?

I need to travel frequently for my photographic series. When traveling I am confronted with a reality that has up until then been unknown to me. I am a rather curious person and enjoy looking at the world and its scenic details with open eyes. These scenic details are what I capture with my photography. This moment, an esthetic coincident, working like a stage direction for me, determines my artistic exploration of it.

Your works of art seem very planned and thoroughly considered. To what degree do you work with spontaneity when creating an artwork? What is your working method?

As a person who has worked several years at theaters I have acquired the custom to take a scenic look at my surroundings. In this typical theater manner I am taking a look at life as if the world were on stage. This is how I work and this is how my themes and series are being created. At the beginning of each series, I am researching on the theme. Often this means that the first ideas and concepts are identified. Only after that, I start the outdoor part of my work, dealing with the subject photographically. This work, prior to a finished series, can be a rather lengthy process, as it was for Polo and Baywatch.  Naturally I have to accept the schedule for meets and competitions as well as the locations where the events take place, which can be all over the world. This requires very careful planning to make sure you get all the necessary photo material documented. You need to interview athletes and the right representatives of the respective organization as well as organize permits for the shooting. In other words, before you have even taken a single picture, several months has gone by. However, as soon as I have all my material and documentations I can work on my series whenever I want to. This is important, as the creative process changes with time and the distance this creates to the gathered material. This is my process – the mix of enacted photography with reports and documentations formed into series. This is my method.

How would you describe a successful work of art?

A successful work of art? Hmmm, I guess for me a successful work of art is something that moves the onlooker emotionally and sticks to his memory.

Questions made by Amalie Frederiksen

Daniela Finkes kunstfotografi afspejler en nysgerrighed over for menneskets sociale tilbøjeligheder, bizarre vaner og livsmønstre. Med en semi-antropologisk dagsorden rejser Finke verden rundt for at iagttage og fotografere folk og liv i diverse multikulturelle, mangfoldige og brogede afskygninger. Dagligdags observationer fra Tysklands parker, Thailands markeder eller Miamis strande omdannes til æstetiske fortællinger fra en både fjern men også genkendelig verden.

Finkes gennemtænkte kompositioner, rytmiske billedstruktur og store farveflader præsenterer beskueren for en konstrueret virkelighed, der nærmer sig noget fjernt og illusorisk. Værkerne trækker veksler på det 20. århundredes store kolorister som Edward Hopper og David Hockney, der ligesom Finke skildrede hverdagen i et forsimplet og æstetisk smukt formsprog, der med en sjælden intensitet forvandlede det almindelige til noget smukt og dragende.

Finkes originale form for billedbehandling forlener hendes fotografier med et særligt malerisk og subjektivt udtryk, der gør det vanskeligt at identificere værkerne som fotografier. Det karakteristiske slørede udtryk, den iøjefaldende ’plettede’ fremtoning og de udflydende konturer tilfører værkerne deres drømmeagtige og virkelighedsfjerne strejf, der synes at øge distancen mellem den afbildede virkelighed og beskuerens.

Til trods for Finkes karakteristiske evne til at iagttage og observere er hendes fotografier langt fra dokumenterende. I Finkes digitalkunst fremtrylles et idylliseret og næsten surrealistisk univers, der kun momentvis tegner tråde til den virkelige virkelighed. En forenklet realisme, hvor virkeligheden kondenseres til former og farver. Således skildrer Finke ikke virkeligheden ’som den er’, men virkeligheden tegner sig snarere som en dekonstruktion af det reelle. Med manipulationsteknikken som kunstnerisk virkemiddel placerer Finkes kunst sig i mellemrummet mellem det naturlige og det kunstige, mellem fiktion og fakta. Den æstetisk gennemførte billedmanipulation fungerer samtidig som en kommentar til den digitaliserede og medialiserede virkelighed, hvor grænserne mellem det virkelige og det virtuelle, det artificielle og det naturlige synes udflydende. At opfattelsen af virkeligheden i dag i høj grad manipuleres og formes gennem medier er et gennemgående tema i Finkes fotografier, der konfronterer beskueren med spørgsmålet: Hvad er virkelighed?

Amalie Frederiksen

Bachelor in Art History