Das Licht der Welt

It is the 31.12.1976, 1.41 pm.
This is the moment when I was born, in a tiled room on the first floor of a corner building on Robert-Weixler-Straße 9 in Kempten in the Allgäu. No one took photographs in the delivery room at that moment.

The absence of these pictures became the catalyst for a reconstruction four decades later. All available information was compiled using 3D software, imagining the delivery room as a sundial to messure the convergence of siet and instant. In the virtual space, a digital sun shines onto the reconstruction: the light penetrates the room just as it did on that day at that time.

untitled

velour carpet, brass frame, acrylic glass, 100 x 140 x 6 cm, 2019

Der Marktplatz von Freudenstadt

Am 28. Februar 2017 bin ich von Düsseldorf aus mit meinem Auto los, hinten im Anhänger mit dabei das Bild mit Rahmenkonstruktion und Beleuchtung.

Staying with the Pictures

… the photographs from the delivery room don’t provide memories but only vague images. Das Licht der Welt (The Light of the World) attempts a ‘Total Recall’, it tries to restore confusing visual impressions through a reconstruction of the place – but in doing so, only conceals the actual subjective experience. It can generally … be stated that there is a strange ontological tone of reality that overlays much of Tobias Hantmann’s work, something that Helmut Lethen so aptly described in terms of the photographic: „the photographic object, cut off from the world, allies itself with the loneliness of the subject.“ Therefore it is …