Tobias Faisst

To be honest, I was a bit overwhelmed with the Romka assignment at first. Browsing through my works from the last two years, I was looking for an image that I’d have a strong emotional connection with. I was a little surprised when I couldn’t find one. I was just about to go into the basement to look through family pictures, photos from my youth, or old analog images of mine in order to find this one particular picture that would tell a great story. I somehow kept staving off my visit to the basement, because I realized that my relationship with photography has changed a lot in the last couple of years.

In the past, photography meant capturing moments and preserving time. My practice is very different now. I approach the creation of images from a scientific angle — and I do that mostly on my own. I hardly take pictures of personal moments. Somehow I don’t need photography for that anymore. I nowadays engage with things which I don’t understand or which interest me on a conceptual rather than an emotional plane. This allows me to raise more general questions with and through photography. I think I am doing that in order to embed myself in my work in a more oblique way.

The picture I chose is a good example for that. Taken out of context, it might actually leave most people unmoved. The image is an abstract from my last project EIDOS. The series deals with the perception of reality at the intersection of computer-generated images and photography. This picture is particularly important because its essence visually encapsulates my line of thought.

The beauty of a series is that I can personally perceive my whole experience during the process compromised in a single picture. In their entirety, these are moments of joy, excitement, curiosity, and beauty, which somebody from the outside cannot access without me providing the key.