Stages

When someone in the twenty-first century describes photographs as painterly, this can be read as a pejorative or an ironic reference, since it was assumed that photography would replace painting as the leading artistic medium in the century before last. However, the photographs of Berlin artist Anna Lehmann-Brauns manage to translate the painterly into a contemporary photographic language without any irony. Whether she is photographing the Bosphorus from the window of a ferry in Istanbul, interiors in Berlin pubs, gay clubs in San Francisco, dusty shop windows of Charlott enburg junk stores, or self-built model rooms, her pictures always develop an enigmatic, magical atmosphere that att racts the viewer and oft en suggests associations with famous paintings. While wistfulness and melancholy resonate in many of her pictures, other brightly coloured interior shots radiate a masterful, cool elegance. The book’s title, Stages, refers to stages in both the literal and f i gurative senses, as imaginary stages for everyday occurences, while also referencing phases. In her fourth individual publication, Lehmann-Brauns combines various series of unpublished works from recent years, to document a powerful creative phase.