{"id":3002,"date":"2021-11-02T12:33:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T11:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zens.info\/phot\/en\/?page_id=3002"},"modified":"2025-07-26T18:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:42:12","slug":"a-play-with-time-and-a-mirror-of-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/zens.info\/en\/essay\/a-play-with-time-and-a-mirror-of-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"A Play with Time and a Mirror of Ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Play with Time and a Mirror of Ourselves<\/span>
\nVisual languages between recollections, archives and algorithms<\/h2>\n

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THE MOMENT AND THE MATTER<\/p>\n

My artistic works are about the interaction of history and biography and about the importance of images for our self-understanding. These topics are based on my studies of history, literature and psychoanalysis, as well as photography. The understanding that we can\u2019t help but live and think in images \u2013 this basic anthropological assumption \u2013 has become more and more apparent to me over the years.<\/p>\n

Through images we channel our curiosity for the unexpected. As we search for our place in the world, we follow our longing for existential reassurance. It is through images that we develop our powers of imagination and judgement. We use them to re-enact scenarios, just as we do in our dreams and in our thoughts. And in the best case scenario – in the face of the omnipresent flood of images and synthetic image creation by means of artificial intelligence – it is through them that we learn to assess the authenticity of the images themselves and our position in the world.<\/p>\n

Among all the arts, poetry and photography play a pivotal role in this context. Indeed, photography\u2019s technological ability to capture living moments and to condense emotions corresponds in the most brilliant way to our selective perception of the outer world and our fragmentary recollections of our inner worlds. The poetic language in poetry and photography has accompanied me from the very beginning, opening up spaces for our imagination through metaphors, myths and legends as well as through rhythm and sound.<\/p>\n

When I speak of images here, it is meant in a sense that transcends literature and photography. Both forms of expression are understood as parallel worlds in their own right, which do not mix, but which can touch each other: the photographs generated by imaging processes and likewise poetry, prose, and essays with all their rhetorical figures and stylistic forms.
\n…<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Rosemarie Zens 2024 (translated by Stephen Grynwasser)<\/p>\n

The entire essay (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n

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