The decline of the index finger
A reference to Peter Wagner's photographs,
by someone who didn't want to be named,
from a time when the digital world was still in diapers...
When I was little, a great number of little tin men and tin women - in suits, with hats, mustaches or long pigtails - trundled through the black-and-white films of history like crazy, with a huge flight spring raised. Or staggered from starboard to port on emigrant ships with flapping hands, flamingos wrapped in tulle tripped through Berlin's avenues, wept like spray candles several liters in dramatic scenes, while heroes, as they only existed at that time, chased untamed hell cars like hummingbirds. In the photographs, the same people stood frozen in dignity, seriousness and Sunday clothes, as if they had been practicing all their lives for this one moment of stillness. That happened before our colored times, before people learned to walk properly and carefully and before they lost the art and probably also the desire to look into the eye of the camera with dignity and seriousness.
Somehow they all withdraw into themselves. Peter Wagner photographs in slow motion. Strolling, casually, with the lightness of an ocular somersault and with the unspoken consent of all portrayed. It's as if they asked the photographer to hold them in the position most comfortable for them, to persevere from opening to closing the shutter with the playful composure of a one-legged stork, as if that's the only way they could hibernate in shoeboxes full of photographs .
That's why I miss the photo in Peter Wagner, too, in which the anger of the involuntary having to keep still was captured. A runner whose inner tension could tear the paper, a breath that won't let go and makes your throat puff out like a bursting frog, a stare held: as if the concave pupil had to swell until the photo bubbled. Mr. Wagner, on the other hand, indulges in the inverse spectacle: those portrayed are "sleepers". like those agents first lead an inconspicuous life as Müller-Maier ... only to be activated again "from over there", Wagner's photos eke out an unnoticed existence until someone with the gift of keeping still and paying attention comes along and spies on the inner workings of the photo. The children have been waiting under the circus cupola of Irish redwoods ever since the shutter was opened, waiting for them to be allowed to continue as children in another picture where they left off in Wagner's photo. Have stopped adventurously growing up in the concave mirror of the viewer
...Taking a picture of a laugh without offering more than a side view of a girl's head from behind, it's as if the ear withered to be able to feel the tension of the vowels with the eye on the relief of the face. I can't imagine a click ever being heard as Wagner captured the different tempos of life with the corresponding exposure times. Bad or good black and white photo art can be recognized by the fact that you immediately know why it was made. Their tasteful effects evoke something like heart chirping: Oh, how delicious: laughing clochard, bonjour sadness, sleazy boy kisses girls, backyard stages, the big train station world, Paris and again Paris, bridges and beaches draped with loneliness, symmetries and saxophone players among New Yorkers street lamps. Each of these photos is a decal from the archive of "What a wonderful world this could be..."
Mr. Wagner, on the other hand, indulges in the inverse spectacle: those portrayed are "sleepers". like those agents first lead an inconspicuous life as Müller-Maier ... only to be activated again "from over there", Wagner's photos eke out an unnoticed existence until someone with the gift of keeping still and paying attention comes along and spies on the inner workings of the photo. The children have been waiting under the circus cupola of Irish redwoods ever since the shutter was opened, waiting for them to be allowed to continue as children in another picture where they left off in Wagner's photo. Have stopped adventurously growing up in the concave mirror of the viewer.
