Obsession for Freedom – a revolution „back to basics“.
Maybe it all came from naivety, and i don’t know how to describe it, but the thought of it was circling me over and over again. It was the idea of creating something “real”. For sure, it was a leap in the dark, but if you feel a calling to do something, it gives you the feeling that there is no turning back – which is incredible!
Ultimately, it was, consciously or unconsciously, the rebellion for freedom that enabled us to experience moments of truth. And, like a common thread, that freedom moved through the days and was omnipresent for each of my companions on this trip.
Fifteen to twenty years ago, it would surely have been nothing special, but you can feel clearly these days that freedom of creating and acting is receding more and more into the background. The digital age with its glut of information and techniques, the overstimulation in the western world –it seems like we‘re all just marionettes of the given resources. Sure, we cannot and must not refuse progress, and of course it has its right to exist, but even if the new and modern path to our goals is different, do the goals themselves then have to be different ones? In pursuing of them, shouldn’t we be careful not to lose sight of the old values, to be true to ourselves and keep truth, authenticity and freedom in focus?
It increasingly seems that it is already socially acceptable to wave shallow pictures and goodwill through as artistic freedom. These versions of truth are at best bold claims or mistruths. Maybe it‘s the fast pace that makes people get a blurry view of things, but one thing is for sure: more than ever, we have to take care not to lose ourselves out there.
As an analog player in a digital world, maybe you have to preserve your honesty, remain real and not pretend something. But maybe you have to turn your whole life into a work of art and follow your impulse to create and be something unexpected. And maybe you should hold on to these exact thoughts in your dreams, every night. And perhaps these are the exact thoughts that accompany you every day for the rest of your life. It might be more than just a simple photographer´s unusual way of thinking, or maybe it sounds completely neurotic, perhaps it is exactly this interplay of illusion and truth which makes life so exciting. You plan in one direction, but suddenly a completely new possibility appears and all changed into another direction.
For me, from my position, it was honestly a privilege to be on such a great journey with four really wonderful women and be allowed to act as a quiet observer. Each one of them has incredibly shaped me and become an important part of my life. Thereby they came into my life in such different ways. You can try to search for them, you can strive for the perfect supplement for such kind of a project, but you‘ll discover in the end that pure fate is the reason that brought our paths together.
Of course, you can’t just go to a place of your choice and say, “ok, here we are now”. perhaps a subject stands in a space, or you create a fictitious scenario, or, as in our case, you ́ve got a story which is destined to be a common thread. our story? freedom. it was the impulse for a story behind the story –you can’t plan what arises from that. it‘s an incredible and exciting feeling to just let things happen. It wasn ́t fake or even something staged, it was pure observing, to capture the moments as a contemporary witness and perceive what appears –this is exactly what happened here. For sure, the photography itself is not perfect, but this wasn’t the aim at all. the idea wasn‘t so much to create a fully planned production, it was more about spending a great time together. What resulted here in the wadden sea and on the island of sylt in the form of these photographs, on the edge of this time – this is a bonus.
The choice of destination was well considered and led us consciously to the island of sylt and the wadden sea. I think only here, when the water has gone and the silence and the infinite width has spread out, only then you are able to develop absolutely freely and unaffectedly, be completely yourself and maybe discover something new between all this. In this calm and in small but very intense moments, you can see them – the quite special and profound instants in which you discover yourself and know yourself in a whole new way. At least then, when the water comes back faster and faster and makes its way back towards the coast, then you can feel all over your body that we live in a incredibly exciting world. Life is meant to be a life in fullness and we should become aware of this.
I don‘t know what will happen yet and i also don‘t know if you should strive for something for the rest of your life, but if you can feelthose special moments and the pure life over the course of time, you can only realize one thing – I AM FREE!
Obsession for Freedom!
The first work of Alexander von Wiedenbeck
Limitierte Edition 1.000 Exemplare
108 Seiten im Format 220x280mm gedruckt in Novaton
ISBN 978-3-00-045259-8
