The image here by Gerhard Richter reminds me a lot of how I am working with photographs in my project about memory. Richter’s process makes his photographs have a blurry quality to them. There seems to be a statement here of time or permanence. I am also attempting to discuss time and permanence but through image and memory and symbolism (perhaps a touch of surrealism). I am also very attracted to Richter’s sense of composition. His figurative works are neatly composed. But the neat composition combined with the blurring effect give his work dark undertones.
The blurriness is in full effect in this piece and the monochromatic quality to it is reminding me of how I am working with paint for my memory-project; before I begin each composition, I am laying down a foundation of gray and painting over it while the paint is still wet. I have to work a bit harder to work up the colors, the blacks and the whites in the pieces I am doing but it is giving those pieces the same monochromatic effect I am loving here in Richter’s work. Looking at this particular piece, it occurs to me that these works are about ghosts or about hauntings and I believe that the photographs from an old family album that I am choosing to treat in my paintings (or maybe, the photos that are choosing me) are about the things that haunt me: The specters that wander my subconscious.
This Black and white Richter image has me thinking about going deeper and further back into the family albums. Particularly the albums of my German mother and begin meditating on the images of her life before I was born to see what ghosts emerge.