AURAMA — Reversed perspective

AURAMA — The inversion of the perspective

An unconventional idea...

Looking back, this is one of my most important conceptual works. Created at the beginning of the 1990s, long before digital image processing existed.

By questioning the perspective way of thinking, the results have influenced my future image perception very strongly.

I have nothing to hide. But I want to see more!

I was looking for a concept to represent people, exactly as they are. But not just as a portrait from the front, the side, etc. The entire person should be visible. Without any manipulation, image editing or composing multiple photos.

People should be seen as they are. Quite simply with a single shot on the negative film.

These photos came out of the camera as they can be seen here.

The large photographic working area

A large photographic site was AURAMA. I worked several years ago involved in different forms of perspective. I created among others, an extensive series of mirror images. Flexible mirror produced such a significant expansion of the horizon and thus the image-wise perspective.
Although this newfound perspective was fascinating, but soon I reached a limit. Not by the picture's message, but rather from a starting-point. I got the idea to create photographies of persons, so that they can be seen simultaneously from all sides. I gave them the name AURAMA photographies, a combination of the words Aura and Panorama.

The inversion the perspective

To recognized more than one usually can see is a frequent whish. There are many opportunities to do that. By purely technical means or by mental training such as meditation. On this basis, I developed the following questions:

How do I stand in the world — how the world relates to me?
How doe the world sees me — how am I seen by the world?
How will I be seen by all the people around me — not individually, but from all together?
What is the center of the periphery — is there an inversion of perspective?

Imagine the following:
You are in a group of people. You are in the middle. You see your surroundings, your friends. That's clear. But how do all your friends see YOU? Not individually but as a whole, all together, as a kind of virtual unit, all your friends as a community?
It's a kind of reverse view ... how are you seen in the society, in a community?
A question that has kept me busy for a long time, not just since Facebook.

I created new picture series afterwards. Even some with much more subtle aspects that go very well in their statement in a similar direction.

It went AURAMA

I created this series between 1991 and 1993. They were exhibited at the Galerie Christine Brügger in Berne. Conceptual preparation work and experiments started at 1990. All pictures were taken live in the studio, as usual at that time analog on negative films. These are original pictures that were neither changed or manipulated on a computer.