FRANZISKA KUNZE
Artist unknown.
Afterimage by Franziska Kunze:
This picture hangs framed in my living room; I’ve had it for almost 20 years. It has always been close to me, but I’ve never really taken the time to think about why. So, when I was asked about an afterimage, I thought: What image resonates with me? There are many, but often they stay with me for maybe a few minutes, a day, or a couple of days—if it’s a particularly urgent image. But this one has been constantly by my side for many many years and I always come back to it.
I don’t know who took this picture because I found it during an internship at the Hamburger Kunsthalle on my semester break in 2006. At that time, I was studying for my bachelor’s degree in communication studies and art history and I was curious how the work in an education department in a museum looks like. There were a lot of summer courses going on, including a photogram course, which took place in the room next to mine. I was curious, so after the course finished, I went in and saw all these beautiful photograms created by very young children—some of them even preschoolers. The variety was astonishing, but there was one picture that had been discarded in the trash. I took it out and immediately fell in love with it. I loved the shapes and forms and the dynamic of the arrangement. I asked my colleague if she remembered why it had been thrown away, and she recalled that the child wasn’t happy with how the shapes had shifted on the surface. So, that dynamic that I felt so strongly about, initially wasn’t meant to be and, obviously, wasn’t worth keeping. I see this with other children in my personal life too—how they can be very hard on themselves, especially when it comes to art.
I rescued the image from the bin because I thought it was cute, and I still think it’s beautiful both in its simplicity and complexity. I also appreciated that this child had obviously approached the format differently—by cropping it and freeing it from its strict rectangular appearance. That shift in form, I think, adds a lot to the dynamic of the piece. For me, this image serves as an important reminder of many things. For one, I believe it’s crucial to educate children about photography at an early age, especially now. When I was working on my PhD thesis, I was fortunate to spend some months at The Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University with Elizabeth Edwards and even more intensely with Kelley Wilder, who taught photography to history students.
Many younger students today take photography for granted. They think that what they see is simply what they get. They don’t realize that, even in the 19th century, photography—no matter the subject, even war photography—was usually staged. I think it’s essential to teach children how photographs are made, of course in the analog sense but also within the digital spheres which seems even more pressing currently. Kids have smartphones everywhere; they use images, see images, create images and distribute images within seconds. But often, they don’t fully grasp what it really means to make an image. How is it made? What is the background of the picture? What is happening there? And who is involved? I think this is important—and this picture reminds me of that.
There’s a famous quote by Ansel Adams that says: ‘You don’t take a photograph, you make it.’ This quote resonates with me deeply. It’s something I always tell students or visitors in general when I guide them through the collection: You have to be aware that photography is not just a click—and then you’re done. It’s crafted. And there are so many decisions involved: What technique and material do you use? What camera do you choose? Do you even use a camera at all? In the case of this image, the young creator made a number of subjective decisions that shaped the final result. In the end, and perhaps this is the most important takeaway from this picture, it reminds me to be playful and to stay curious.
Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue in 2010.