Dieter Leistner – Magic Architecture. Photographs
July 20 – November 3, 2004
"I have always been fascinated by being able to create an image without painting."
Dieter Leistner the architecture photographer is concerned with more than mere specialist documentation. He is convinced that behind every building there is an idea, a vision, which he attempts to pinpoint and capture in his pictures. Which is why, in addition to explanatory and illustrative images he always produced some that portray unusual situations and reveal the magical effect of spatial structures.
It all began with the "Badetempel"(bathing temples). At the time, the early 1980s, Dieter Leistner was still a student at the Folkwang Schule in Essen. His tutors there included Reinhard Wolf, Erich vom Endt and Robert Lebeck. He then continued his education at Bergische Universität in Wuppertal, where he came across the legendary Willy Fleckhaus.
Leistner's plan to document old turn of the century and art nouveau indoor swimming pools found an enthusiastic audience and the works rapidly developed into a kind of trademark for his specific view of things.
This is the one aspect of his work. Leistner is also considered to be one
of the leading contemporary interpreters of architecture – by, among others,
Gottfried Böhm, Gustav Peichl, Richard Meier, Thomas Herzog, Heinz Bienefeld,
O. M. Ungers, i.e. the elite of European architecture. Leistner has followed
and documented their work. In doing so he is inspired by the dramatics of the
interiors, by the interweaving and forcefulness of the constructions. He focuses
on illustrating and revealing their peculiarities and characteristic features.
Yet if it is truly outstanding, architecture photography always unveils more than is at first sight apparent.
The "Upward Views", in which Leistner celebrates "his" architects as if the
essence of their works is combined here, is a case in point. The outcome is
hundreds of painstakingly numbered, highly abstract, kaleidoscope-like views.
However, he also emphatically emphasizes the architects' main characteristics
– in quadratures, ellipses, circles, grids, meshes and lattices. Which represent
the élan of their aesthetics. A selection of both groups of photos
is on display in the Design Collection.
|
