Reinhard Berg -Shadow World/s from December 19, 2021 to March 2022

The shadow does not lead a shadowy existence: you can throw it, chase it, jump over it, stay in it and be afraid of it - whether as a course crush, in the shadow cabinet or when shadow boxing.

In photography, the shadow plays an important creative role in depicting the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional level. For the Wiesbaden photographer Reinhard Berg, however, the shadow is no longer a compositional tool for creating spatiality and plasticity. Instead, he gives this fleeting phenomenon back its own life, emancipates it from light and originality, and accepts it as its own reality. Where it comes from, who its origin is, no longer plays a role. He is also not interested in the well-known connotations such as the unattainable shadow man, shadow caster, shadow economy, etc. Instead, he goes back to the beginnings, which lie more than 30,000 years ago, when there was no photography, but graffiti and cave drawings, and the shadow was people's first self-perception.

Clothing, colors, individual expression and relevant details disappear in the uniform flatness of the shadow. They are not visible in the shadow. One could also say that in the shadow all people are the same and only differ in their posture and contours.

For Reinhard Berg, this form of "reduction" gives rise to a new approach to photographic work, the focus of which shifts from the external and realistic to the universally valid.

In this series, the shadow manifests itself in two variants. Firstly, there are expressive shadow photos behind acrylic glass with a realistic, dynamic choice of motif, and secondly, fine art photos with the appearance of "cave paintings". All works include blends of graffiti, structures and shadows. Often there are up to 5 images that are superimposed in post-processing. Even for the trained eye, it is not possible to tell at first glance what is photographed and what could be painted.

With these and other recent images, Reinhard Berg has consciously moved away from documentary photography, which was his profession for many years, and opted for artistic representation.

His medium is still photography, his tool the camera, but with these works he has blurred boundaries and dissolved ambiguities.

It remains exciting to see where this path will lead him.

Tobias Mahlow, media futura, editorial team WIESBADENER*IN, 'Issue I/2022