Made Realities
Draiflessen Collection
Photographs by Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall
Hirmer, Munich, 2021
Hardcover with two-coloured embossing
136 pages, 240 × 216 mm
Three separate language editions (German, English, Dutch)
Accompanying publication to the exibition Made Realities at Draiflessen Collection, Mettingen (02.05.–25.07.2021), curated by Olesja Nein. With contributions by Julia Franck, Angela Steidele, Jonas Lüscher, and George Pavlopoulos.
Showcasing the work of Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Andreas Gursky, and Jeff Wall, the exhibition presented four photographers whose images skilfully interrogate the possibilities and limitations of their chosen medium. Working with both analogue and digital technologies, the four artists not only formulate wholly distinct ways of seeing reality but analyse human perception itself. Their subjects range from fleeting everyday scenes to mysterious events and re-enacted historical happenings. What these images all share is the artists’ intent to meld the documentary – traditionally photography’s cardinal virtue – with the fictional. Without losing the connection to something that once existed, they construct glimpses of worlds that are as convincing as they are disconcerting.