Pastime Paradise

The photographer Christian Gieraths is a traveller. He takes his photographs on journeys which lead him into all directions around the globe. Rushing through the spaces in the nowhere of today´s travelling landscapes turns Gieraths to pause. He produces a photographic encyclopaedia of mostly deserted ordinary places with a kind of poetry that makes us marvel. This is no picturesque poetry aimed at by the photographer but a structural, nearly constructive form which functions via lines, reflections, materials and perspectives. Gieraths observes and stops when others continue in haste. He catches a moment of pause and creates a shape for it. Some pictures, which are developed in this situation, are very striking. Planes are lined up nearly typographically, contrasts sometimes produced by minimal shift of colour and structure. The surface of things turns to be symbolic; the short moment of notice becomes de-temporized and extended by photography. In photos there is a “shortly before” or “just”. The deserted photographs are not de-human. Traces of usurpation and use are everywhere. Here, things have been touched, life has been lived, but not right now. In so far Christian Gieraths´ view has a museum like component. He lets the present appear as history, the photographs in their precision reveal history being present.