TITLE: Beauty in Doubt

Under the impression of the Corona pandemic and its consequence for the personal view of the world, of culture and nature, I devote myself to non-contact indoor photography in the studio and look for a metaphor on the photo table for the situation in which we live and with which we deal.
To stage the battered nature and its beauty is the primary effort of my group of works "Beauty in Doubt". This is done by staging fruits, of vegetables and flowers as still lifes in diffuse space and with sparing use of light. The things seem to both peel out of the darkness and sink into it. The scene directs the focus to the appearance of the objects, presenting them isolated, highlighted, and ambivalent between life and death, desire and exploitation, ideal and detail. Through both the arrangement of the fruits/flowers and their formal composition, and the use of light, a strong plasticity and presence of the motifs succeeds in an attitude of the everyday. Everything is reminiscent of baroque still life painting and its "memento mori" reminders. The photographs engage with this painterly tradition and push the baroque admonition further into a "memento mortalis natura".

AUTHOR: Christoph Honig (Germany)

Photographic work since 1970
1974 – 82 studies at the academy of arts in Stuttgart & Düsseldorf
painting, sculpture, free graphics
Master of Art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, 1981
Photo exhibitions and publications since 2005
lives in Essen

2018 NTA - New Talent Award 18/2, Canon & ProfiFoto
2020 - ND Award 2020 (Neutral Density Award): lobende Erwähnung für die drei Werkgruppen „Blüten-Stillleben“, „Entfesselte Blumen“ und „Kirmesbuden“
- Chromatik Photo Award 2020, lobende Erwähnung