Publisher's Description
Hans Danuser: Frost
Essay by Urs Stahel.
The various environments of modern science-genetic engineering, atomic
energy, pathology, and animal testing-are the subjects of Hans Danuser's
austerely beautiful black-and-white photographs. His images depict in clinical
detail the research labs and factories, inaccessible to most of us, where new
energies, knowledge, and power are generated. Recent series included in Frost
continue to pursue his signature motifs, but push a step further toward
abstraction, to the point where the photograph becomes an almost pure
image. In Frozen Embryo, Danuser reveals the microscopic details of frozen
embryos, intricate structures and surfaces that, once deciphered, might yield
the secret of human life. Strangled Body captures partial small fragments of
murder victims-skin as a fragile, movingly delicate membrane, precarious
and precious at the same time. In Erosion, Danuser celebrates the terrifying
beauty of eroded soil.The accompanying in-depth essay examines the evolution of Danuser's imagery from his minimal and claustrophobic observations of nuclear and pharmaceutical laboratories to the increasingly abstract and
dense visions of his recent series, and emphasizes his salient amalgamation of
intellectual and aesthetic concerns to create images that highlight some of
the most pressing issues of today. Here is an artist who shows alarmingly vulnerable surfaces and the traces of human or natural powers inscribed on them-sublime indexes of life and death whose emotional impact is heightened by their abstract beauty.
Urs Stahel, born in 1953, is the director of the Winterthur Fotomuseum and
the editor of a number of publications on photography. He lives in Zurich.
Swiss photographer Hans Danuser was born in 1953. His work is represented
in various international collections, including the photography collection of
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Danuser lives and works in
Switzerland, Britain, and Germany.
'I pit life in cold storage-which, being frozen,
can be manipulated-against a word-picture,
the nonsense poetry of a child's counting
rhyme humorously inscribed on the wall:
INI MINI MEINI MOU. Life is an accident, a
genetic gamble.'
-Hans Danuser