A volume of photographs by Heinz Peter Knes representing a small selection from his extensive archive of travel photography dating back to 2010.
Unlike a conventional approach to a personal travel log, indexing places and situations, ordered according to chronologies or geographies, the photos and their ordering reflect upon broader cultural themes driven by personal interests, desires, and chance. Knes, in conversation with Julie Ault, ordered the images according to subjective and associative categories influenced by Warburg's “law of the good neighbor”, Warburg's principal of library organization based on the exchange and mutual engagement between books placed next to each other, rather than classical groupings that branch off from general categories such as “fine art” or “photography.” On distance opens up a similar research into the possible languages that emerge within images when they are allowed to be read without restraints of preconceived modes of categorizing knowledge and experience.
Publié à l'occasion de l'exposition « mothertongue » de Danh Vo, au Pavillon danois de la 56e Biennale de Venise, du 9 mai au 22 novembre 2015.
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.
