An artist's book documenting apartment installations created with a series of twelve photoworks (C-prints, posters and one paper collage).
Make believe is a monographic publication by German photographer Heinz Peter Knes, published as an
extension of an eponymic series of twelve photographic works (posters, C-prints and one paper collage).
This book presents Knes' appropriation of this body of work and proposes diverse ways to display these photographs,
confronting the images with several interiors, deserted apartments that Knes chose as backdrops
for his still life mise-en-scènes. The series of prints is available for sale as an unlimited edition; not meant to
be exhibited on gallery walls, this set of photographs is available for those wanting to keep the installation
an ongoing process in a private context.
The original prints of Make believe propose a subjective and political tableau of the city of Berlin: dug from
Knes' archives, they have been captured over the last ten years, a period corresponding to the artist's residency
in the German metropolis. Primarily meant to document his encounters with the city, these images,
when retrospectively selected by Knes, furthermore depict the city as a stage for political issues. Indeed,
Knes portrays Berlin through an iconography raising economical, governmental and social connotations,
deliberately explicit or more ambiguous/incidental: a close-up of the golden facade of Axel-Springer-Haus
(a German press tycoon, with an anti-intellectual, conservative right-wing editorial publishing house located
in front of the Wall), an anti-George W. Bush demonstrator, a miniature reproduction of a shed, a low-key
TV crew at a Kurdish demonstration, two identical horses (one at the left and the other to the right, facing
each other), details of a Plattenbau building (a prefabricated construction, emblematic of former East Germany)
with a «ghost» appearing in the window and the lethargic back of a person at a bus station...and so on.
Knes plays with the heterogeneity of forms and functions of the photographic object. Pinned on a wall next
to a framed painting, the photograph is considered as a piece of art. Stacked on a desk, it stands for documentation.
Under the foot of a chair, it becomes functional. Cut, trashed, torn, folded, archived, exhibited,
twisted, stuck, superimposed, interlayered, unbalanced, hidden, cropped—mistreated, ignored, forgotten or
glorified—the photographic object via the eyes of Knes is desacralized, trivialized/banalized, by giving it
back its everyday acceptance and usage.
Not only multiple in shapes and arrangements, these pictures are mutant and ambivalent in meanings,
triggering alternative implications when confronted by the various codes that furniture and objects in the
apartment represent. Each setup and association either serves or deprives any given image, either parasited
or empowered by its surroundings, through an iconographic mise-en-abyme of signs and symbols. make
believe examines the political authority of photographs depending on their contextualization, and through
their immersion within a private domain. Knes also interrogates the very nature of the image itself, the determination
of its political value, pondering under what conditions an image promotes/conveys a committed
statement.
500 hand numbered copies limited edition.
Heinz Peter Knes (born 1969 in Gemünden am Main, Germany, lives and works in Berlin) is a photographer. He studied photography on Fachhochschule Dortmund, from 1993 to 1999. His work has been published in several international magazines, including Camera Austria, Wire, 032c, Iann, Spex, Dutch, Readymade, Freier, i-D, Butt, or Purple. In 1998, he co-founded the photo fanzine Strahlung.Knes was first recognized through his work about adolescence: a series of photographs called "E.M.T. in MSP." He became known outside Germany through his collaboration with Butt. His contributions to the magazine have been gathered in the anthology Best of Butt, published by Taschen. Knes has exhibited in New York City, Oslo, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Mexico, Porto, or Lisbon. he also concentrated on a reflection about the photographic image within his work, by using video, collages, and text. He was involved in book projects about the Martin Wong—Collection, Julie Ault's art collection, and Hannah Arendt's Library.
See also
Andrée Putman at the CAPC by Heinz Peter Knes.
