Sight • Time • Memory

PHILIPP SCHOLZ RITTERMANN Medium: Large format archival pigment prints mounted to Dibond Images in this body of work are records of field projections onto nocturnal landscapes. They are not Photoshop montages or in-camera double exposures. I have transitioned from photographing the world as it appears, to photographing what I can’t see. The camera allows me to lengthen my gaze, straddling day/night, summer/winter, presence, and absence. Currently, my process involves photographing a site, and either waiting for nightfall, or returning during a different season, to project the previous image onto that exact location at night. Registration of the previous image onto the same location is sometimes deliberately imperfect. Documenting the projection off-axis [from the projector(s)] introduces shadows and perspectival distortions, which further confuse the reading of the images, accentuating temporal and spatial ambiguities of these improbable scenes. Concurrent with the exploration of temporality, questions involving memory, and the role that photography plays in it, arise. Like the experiential filter we apply to everything we encounter, these projections act as a veil of the past through which one looks at the present. There is more to be said about all of this, but I’ll leave it here for now. Philipp Scholz Rittermann, 2022 prittermann@gmail.com +1 (619) 997-9293