Drachensee, Tyrol / Austria, 2018

Peter Neusser  

Visualism - The photographs by Peter Neusser are strict work of pausing on location, on the path, and insights into the urban communication, in which the mediating is blocking something. The horizon is accessible in the urban jungle, not as a promise or a longing in the distance, but rather as an accidental architectural clearing he moves through the images. If the game between sharpness and blur would promise contemplation a time for development or a path to take, so Neusser directs the perspective promise to the artificiality of the detail, or shall we say the shifted focus. Not for the identity of a city Neusser portraits the city of Munich, also it is not a portrait, in vain we would seek a counterpart, but the viewer is gently inserted into the text of urbanity. In the picture our insight is built, and Peter Neusser gets a construction which irritates the usual central perspective view and leads midpoints to marginalia. These photographs are fine movements, deployments of an intuition that requires architectural space as a reference point for the development of time. The images compress the dizziness of movement and the rigidity of construction to a really daring insight into the Urban: We are distracted. If architecture is a coordination of inner and outer space and a coordination of atmosphere of both, then Peter Neusser photographs from inside into the inner city.
Text by Hubert von Amelunxen.//

Photography‘s major strength as well as its major weakness is to just capture one single moment: A certain motif in a certain section in certain light conditions, taken over a certain time period. The sixtieth of a second. Click. Reality always shows more than a picture does – to the left, to the right, above and below the chosen section. In a good photograph the invisible is irrelevant, in one shot it concentrates reality on the character of a person, a building, a landscape. It is like a miracle: Without delivering a whole image, the image created is still complete. It is essential, of course, that the motif can be photographed at all. It is essential that the motifs character can be concentrated in one single moment. It is essential that the photographer presses the shutter button at the right moment. All these prerequisites restrict the medium of photography and constitute its major weakness. A bit too late or too early, a bit too far to the left or to the right, a bit too bright or too dark, a bit too large or too small and instead of a self explaining picture the result would only be a missed chance. Reality is fleeting. Peter Neusser solves this dilemma of photography with his art. His “multiples” reconcile photography and reality. Instead of trying to depict reality he just captures it with his multiple exposures. It is an advantage, of course, that Peter Neusser is one of the few photographers who not only have an eye for the right motif and are able to think graphically but he also has complete technical knowledge of his medium. When photographing multiples, it is important to listen to your artistic soul as well as being able to work with mathematical precision – just like Peter Neusser does. And therefore he manages to do something that virtually cannot be done: His works, always created using analog photography, do not only capture one single moment but stories and experiences.