Dirk Reinartz

Dirk Reinartz has been making portraits of artists for many years, or, more precisely, of visual artists. Classic portrait photography is the theme of this book, but that’s where its similarity with the work of other photographers ends. Reinartz succeeds in his own special way of capturing the person and personality of the artist portrayed. Is Reinartz setting the scene for the artists in his photographs in a certain way, or is the person portrayed doing so himself? But such questions on scene-setting are secondary.

The main thing is the picture itself, no matter whether we mean with that the studio ambience, the paintings and sculptures that appear in the background, or the actual likeness of the artist. The day-glo colors smeared all over Rupprecht Geiger’s gray apron melt into the same tones in the painting standing behind him: the artist is absorbed into his own picture. The head of Richard Serra appears as if a matter of course on the vanishing line between two large steel plates. Katharina Sieverding, portrayed in a automatical photomachine, becomes herself a sculptures, and the penetrating eye contact with Joseph Beuys gives us an inkling of the artist’s power of suggestion.
Press text – Steidl Verlag, Göttingen

each Silvergelatine-Print, 24 x 36 cm (30 x 40 cm)