look inside

what still remains

by Jessica Backhaus

Photographs: Jessica Backhaus

Text: Jean Dykstra, Jessica Backhaus

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag

96 pages

Year: 2009

ISBN: 978-3868280197

Price: 48 €

Comments: Hardcover, 25,7 x 1,8 x 29 cm. Language: English

What Still Remains is the title of a photo series made up of 65 works created since 2006 in various locations. After her first book, Jesus and the Cherries, about life in Rural Poland, the German-American photographer Jessica Backhaus now pursues in this cycle of photographs the question of why things that have been forgotten or left behind pop up in specific places and then seem to take on a life of their own. Backhaus has succeeded here in capturing motifs that exude an air both of sublime and enigmatic. Our gaze is transfixed as we attempt to unravel the mystery of what makes these banal objects so intriguing.

In their composed beauty and expressiveness, Backhaus' photographs are reminiscent of still life paintings. But unlike the classical paintings depicting what were often artificial tableaux of objects meant to evoke aspects of vanitas, Backhaus manages to make time and transience palpable by framing scenes she comes upon by accident.

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A collector's choice by josefchladek.com

look inside

what still remains

by Jessica Backhaus

Photographs: Jessica Backhaus

Text: Jean Dykstra, Jessica Backhaus

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag

96 pages

Year: 2009

ISBN: 978-3868280197

Price: 48 €

Comments: Hardcover, 25,7 x 1,8 x 29 cm. Language: English

What Still Remains is the title of a photo series made up of 65 works created since 2006 in various locations. After her first book, Jesus and the Cherries, about life in Rural Poland, the German-American photographer Jessica Backhaus now pursues in this cycle of photographs the question of why things that have been forgotten or left behind pop up in specific places and then seem to take on a life of their own. Backhaus has succeeded here in capturing motifs that exude an air both of sublime and enigmatic. Our gaze is transfixed as we attempt to unravel the mystery of what makes these banal objects so intriguing.

In their composed beauty and expressiveness, Backhaus' photographs are reminiscent of still life paintings. But unlike the classical paintings depicting what were often artificial tableaux of objects meant to evoke aspects of vanitas, Backhaus manages to make time and transience palpable by framing scenes she comes upon by accident.

More books by Jessica Backhaus