MADE IN GERMANY

7 “I use the medium of photography because my work methods and processes involve the potential in the blink of an eye,” says Philine von Sell. These fragmentary moments, lasting only split seconds, are created in von Sell’s images and stories. They in candesce with the vehemence of her sensual power, till in the end they signify exactly the opposite of the self-dissipating blink of an eye. They give rise to intermixing exterior and interior vision, to views and to insights. The works of Philine von Sell thus unite the documentation of coincidence with the association of the essential, the objective readymade with the subjective reconception. In this way, her photographs of German factories and manufacturing sites, their products and their assembly processes, their daily routines and standardized gestures, become images with an aesthetic all their own, as unique as a fingerprint. This is also reflected in the photographer’s formal approach: von Sell selects a subject, shoots it without a tripod and with an analog medium-format camera, uses only available light, and makes no later manipula tions of any kind. The handmade print shows solely the artist’s respect for what she and her camera have, in the finest sense of the word, captured. The finesse of this approach and the time less, almost classical vocabulary correspond to the high quality of the products that von Sell examines in the photographs presented here. The proximity and appropriation described above give this artistic project a sociopolitical relevance, and for this reason the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, founded in part with the aim of promoting art and culture, has engaged with it: Philine von Sell documents and shapes what lies hidden in the term creat ing value, which has long since been reduced to its pecuniary aspect: namely, the accumulating and precious added value that exists beyond all measurability. The recognition of a moment of emotional quality that also emerges from and is signaled by a very much aesthetically based cultural memory: these images are about individual—and ultimately perhaps also collective— identity. Who does not remember the feel of a Faber-Castell colored pencil in the hand, the texture of its contours and the painted knob at the top? These memories are free of any con sumer-oriented superficiality. On the contrary: they reveal the magic of the perfect surface, manifested as a part of the indi vidual’s own inner life. Many production sites in Germany make things that con tribute decisively to our cultural formation and education, and that have become a part of our lives. These products have be come as natural and casual as Philine von Sell’s photos—and equally lasting. Paging through this book is thus a journey of discovery. It is an exciting journey in which the mixture of nat uralistic and alienating vision makes unmistakably clear that the subject matter, for the most part devoid of human presence, does nothing other than refer ceaselessly to humans (and thereby to us as well). These works are about tracing our histo- ry through companies that have rich traditions; the works have nothing to do with a mythically fraught exaggeration of commis sioned photography. The incorruptible artistic eye of Philine von Sell is self-confident; and we rediscover our own self-confi- dence in this play between nearness and distance, austerity and sympathy. The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung is pleased to take part in a project that possesses artistic quality and sociopolitical expres siveness in equal measure. Philine von Sell reminds the viewer of the identity-endowing beauty of objects in daily life, just as she, free of didacticism, urges industry to be conscious of the aesthetic power of its products. The connection between sensu ousness and understanding could not be more appealing. ON CREATING VALUE HANS-JÖRG CLEMENT

MADE IN GERMANY

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