Kurt Ammann or the grace of photography
Nineteen forty eight. Kurt Ammann, just turned twenty and a Leica.
Kurt is young, just like the world around him, after so much blood and pain. A devastating war is over, leaving destruction and ruins behind, but at the same time life confidently emerges again, as sound as evil and death, the precious life of small things, of simple virtues.
Nobody can root out violence and pain but some wartime adolescents, who watched evil overwhelm everything – and Kurt Ammann among these – managed to endure the tragedy without soiling their souls, without guilty carelessness or self-interested repression.
It’s almost as if these young people had a premonition that in the coming future it would be their task to take care of the frailty, the innocence, the faint but firm hopes supporting a new joie de vivre, perhaps simply the dazed, delighted fact of coming back to life.
Since then and over the years Kurt Ammann has never lingered over pain, though it never stopped to darken the world. An implicit choice, never fully expressed. He behaves as if this was his natural predilection and at the same time his stylistic hallmark. In his work he deals with suspended moments with such conviction that it appears quite spontaneous. We refer to those instants that, due to some mysterious coincidence, lead us to linger over some thought very dear to us; or to imagine an illusion, nurture a spark of real intimacy and mutual respect, freely share happiness – the gift of gods to mankind – or feel fulfilled with genuine joy.
Kurt has kept this innocent look of his youth and his photographs are taken as if in a fleeting instant – catching that trust or fulfilment impulses, that wish for rest – the magic of the camera could capture not just an image but a feeling or a state of mind. It’s almost as if this device also held a secret, among many others: if harmony and happiness cannot last forever, at least just for once, they can appear in their fullness, alive and enjoyable. Just for once.
To open up to the world, against all prejudice, where ignorance nurses aggressiveness and abuse, and identify with mankind without distinction as to belonging. If respected in each single human being, in any place, our delicate, frail and precious life is led according to beliefs, inclinations, uses, passions and tastes, even fantastic attires, deserving warm and shared attention.
Kurt captures places, faces, gestures but his involvement never appears an intrusion, not even once. He never seems to take advantage or sneak in to catch or capture an effect at any cost. And however, Kurt with his Leica, is there. As it occurs only with high-level, talented photographers, the camera gives back and settles Kurt’s special look asking for mutual consent. He stares in somebody’s eyes without avoiding the other’s gaze on himself. Kurt does not steal, he offers himself. And we offer ourselves to him.
Kurt’s universe is the universe of grace. Grace as aesthetic form and ethical perspective. Not beautiful or sublime or comical, but the grace that leads to connection, invites sharing, harmony. The unusual ability to remain ourselves, without hurting feelings or force others. Or rather evolve ourselves thanks to the subtlety that one acquires when one can establish a sound relationship with others. With such an approach Kurt roams the world at large, cities, countryside, sea shores, turning his photography into poetry.
The main timeframe of these images is the present. The future is the present of young people, while the past is impressed on the faces of those in front of us, staring at us. Vital energy or surrender to sleep embody the present. It’s the gelassenheit that lets us dream. All these timeframes filter through the profile of a face with half-closed eyes, flow over a bare shoulder in the sun, gather in an exhausted hand. And are sometimes dreams of love.
We do not find subjects posing and least of all Kurt allows his camera to conform to a code or force into a grid anything captured by his look. Frames do not confine or compress or concentrate through exclusions. Rather, they open up and enlarge, thus expanding the space perception that does not fall inside the photographic frame, but on the contrary expands around it.
Let’s consider Kurt’s portraits, enshrining a bond and an emotion in the form of images. The amused smile in Marc Chagall’s eyes and the daring irony of Oskar Kokoschka. Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s unrivalled defiance. Erika Burkart in her musing distance and the disguised uncertainty of Ingeborg Bachmann. The self-confidence of Alain Resnais, pleased by his motion-picture camera, and a bewildered Federico Fellini, as if his perplexity could cast a shadow on the neat work schedule of Le notti di Cabiria.
It is well-known that Kurt made up his mind not to do a portrait of Thomas Mann because the haughty writer was eternally posing as if gratifying common mortals. However eternity – as Kurt is well aware of – is not a time issue that should bother a photographer.
Alberto Olivetti
Ordinario di Estetica nell’Università degli Studi di Siena
Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Siena, Italy
Dal sito dell’Università di Siena
Alberto Olivetti Director of the Ph.D. Programme in Logos and Representation. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Aestethic, Arts and performing Arts olivetti@unisi.it
Ginostra, November 22nd, 2011