The central theme of Manfred Willmann’s photographic cycles “Das Land” (1981.-1993.), “Oman” (1997.) and “Japanese Food” (2000.), simultaneously shown in Zagreb, are registration, objectivity and visualization of aspects and manifestations of human relations, surroundings and immediate environment, all that encloses people in social and natural landscape where they dwell and act – in their most diversified and often absolutely ambivalent details. The excellent Willmann’s cycle “Das Land”, exhibited all around the world in the most prestigious museums (Museum of Modern Art in New York bought off the part of it), discloses the artist who, at least in this case, does not care for global and great themes, but is focused on just one social (rural) segment, where he moves with ease as its authentic connoisseur and where his eye, sensitive especially to the social aspect, recognizes the motley mosaic of sundry, social and private, often even very intimate details of rural community and villagers’ socializing.
The cycle contains sixty photographs created without special preparations and laboratory editing and shows very intimate photographic entries of people and nature in Grossradl community in western, rural part of Steierland. The artist kept these entries for twelve years as a kind of subjective photographic diary that discloses not only the panorama, but the whole universe of different scenes that document the fullness of village life in the county. These expressive and suggestive, intimately charged photographs show particular landscape’s spirituality and beauty, enhancing and shading it by the presence of local inhabitants. Blended with the environment, fitted into it by the artist’s gesture, they seem to be grown together. “‘Das Land’ means the familiarity with this region, meeting the people and families that live there, their work, their homes, their friends”, says Willmann. Instead of focusing on local historic sites and picturesquesness, like regional customs, insignia and attributes like folk costumes, folklore and similar phenomena, the artist, obviously already at home in the region and well accepted by the locals as a dear guest – avoiding to direct, frame or form into style – registrates small scenes of relaxed and spontaneous atmosphere, frivolous presence, numerous changes throughout the years, alterations of village life dictated by the change of seasons, as in landscape so in animal world, to create the rich and above all convincing mosaic of details that clearly, with unhidden sympathy, document the life – getting into the spheres of social life, like parties, celebrations, dances, but also into the most intimate ones (like a girl washing her feet) – emphasizing these people’s ordinariness and modesty – everyday routine at households and farms – in a small, seemingly uninteresting environment that, as it seems, could be found anywhere. Willmann’s photographs are sometimes naturalistically cruel – like the one showing a cat with bloodstained snout or the other one showing a pig’s head in the cauldron full of bloody water or the photograph of a liver drying on the tree – but sometimes they are deliberately sentimental. “At the same time sentiment blends with roughness, life and death exist in the close touch of reality, peasant’s coarse hands hold a small rabbit with lots of compassion and chopped off pig’s head floats in bloody liquid in the plastic can”, Vinko Srhoj wrote. Willmann exposes villager as a content man, decently registrating his feeling of boredom and resignation as a result of settled life that is carefully planned, from day to day, lived for centuries by established and bent ritual. Living its life, the community fights for its customs and resists the changes that come with contemporary civilization (and aggressively imposed globalization) that are, as the cycle shows, unavoidable. In any case, Willmann “felt” the spot where discrepancy between the world and ego is the thinnest.
Formally, using a flashlight Willmann throws additional light upon phenomena that caught his attention “so that the motif could be emphasized in complete certainty of light, represented in richness of details, even those that have their own full life apart from the central motif. There is also the specific framing in square form that cuts the scene, without need to show the whole or to zoom out the motif to show everything that makes it complete” (Srhoj).
Willmann displays the similar approach, but with reduced presence of people, in other two cycles that present him to the Zagreb’s audience. Particularly sympathetic is his approach to the desert region in the cycle “Oman”, where he wound up as a tourist. In Willmann’s interpretation of the desert reality its every detail is unique and beautiful in its visual attraction and, paradoxically, never monotonous or boring. Traveling the completely flat desert road – thousand miles long – he sends the message that the desert is only seemingly lifeless part of the Earth, that (if we are detached of besetting stereotypes) it is rather easy to spot the aesthetic abundance, visual diversity made by nature in its continuos change and uniqueness of its phenomena. For the nature of the motif itself, and obviously carried away by the width of the horizon, Willmann uses the more effective and attractive panoramic format. Although he is a Westerner, he discloses the understanding and very strong sympathy for the sights and situations in the desert, although he doubtlessly found some of them paradoxical. Reliefs of huge dimensions (resembling, for instance, western jumbo-displays) with motifs of camels and other animals dwelling in Oman desert are rhythmically installed every thirty miles along the road and conjure up the desert fauna even to the natives. The animals are sparse while the desert is vast, so the natives hardly ever see them. When it happens a sad epilogue is possible, as documents the photo of camel’s carcass left in the middle of the road to birds of prey. Willmann is also dazzled by the richness of Oman people who, for example, in the midst of these reliefs (hence in the heart of the desert) grow palms, which means, among other things, providing the water. It is equally fascinating if they bring it by ducts or in any other way.
People of Oman particularly inspired Willmann as shown in the emblematic scene of youngsters playing football with chivalrous, almost superhuman strength in the desert sun and on the few inches thick layer of dust hiding innumerable large pebbles. These scenes disclose almost universal human power and perseverance in adjustment to everything and dealing with all challenges and trials imposed by nature (extreme in desert conditions), the power that allows experiencing the nature not as a limiting factor but even as a stimulating challenge.
The cycle “Japanese food” is part of a similar artist’s optic. Photographed (or “snatched” as ready-made from local mass media) items of particularly packed groceries are taken out of their familiar environment, consumer and low-poetic context to be printed on the sterile white background. Willmann does not establish even the most modest meta-language, he just witnesses the thousand years old Japanese culture embodied in the food packaging. But the examples of this sophisticated practice create the associative bridge between the Oriental and Western culture and art. The structure and relief of a cube of Japanese instant soup, for example, associate the assemblage of French New realism. The unique relief of a bar of black see-weed, that Japanese use as a food wrapping or side dish, is similar to artefacts created by the most refined European masters of informel. The bottle of sake, photographed from above, looks like some European minimalist’s creation…
In all three cycles Willmann, the artist of high visual culture, erudition, métier, sensitive eye and graphically clean solutions, openly or decently creates attractive portraits of various regions on Earth, with particular sensitivity to existential conditions of a man and his settling in the allotted world.
The three exhibited cycles are just a small part of Willmann’s oeuvre. Therefore our obligation to appropriately present his anthological oeuvre is not yet concluded.
Ivica Zupan
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Manfred Willman
Born 1952 in Graz; freelance artist, lives in Graz/Austria 1966-1970 studied HTBL für Dekorative Gestaltung Graz
1970-1971 Meisterklasse für Gebrauchsgrafik, HTBL Graz
1974/75 Director der Fotogalerie im Schillerhof, Graz
since 1975 Director des Fotoreferates und seitdem (mit Christine Frisinghelli) Organisation des Ausstellungs- und Symposionsprogrammes im Forum Stadtpark, Graz / Organization of exhibition programme dedicated to the contemporary international photography, Symposiums on Photography (with Christine Frisinghelli)
1980 founder and since publisher of CAMERA AUSTRIA International magazine
