Aangeschoten, Volker Renner

The blurriness that pervades this artist's book by Volker Renner starts right with the title: the Dutch "aangeschoten" is colloquial for "tipsy" but, more literally, also means "wounded by a shot," alcoholic or otherwise. It's a fine line that separates those two states, and here Renner walks that fine line with his camera: "Who hasn't been there—after a long night in a strange city, too tired to go to bed, too awake to keep going, you drag yourself past the scenes of the evening before or the morning. Sometimes the only thing that helps in this peculiar mood is a visit to one of the world's most incredible museums."

Renner's pictures blend the night's drunken revelry with his tour of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: as though hit by a projectile, teetering and about to pass out, he roams the galleries of the painting and bust collections and carries off the images. What he sees turns into a vision without beginning or end, coming to life, breaking the frame, overflowing the book's pages until the viewer, too, feels pretty "aangeschoten." Meanwhile, the photographer himself gets out of line, attracting the museum attendants' attention. They shake their heads: not a single sharp picture! Are the Old Masters exacting revenge for the thousands of photographs their works are made to pose for day after day?

Published by Volker Renner and Textem Verlag
Softcover
128 pages
157 x 230 mm
ISBN 9783864851711