Benjamin Antony MonnRead more...

Developed since 2002 the workcomplex CANDELA contains photos, which highlight fragmentary architectural details. Each work out of this series chooses a certain construction detail of one building, but changes the angle of view to such an extent, that it's nearly impossible to infer to the elements' original positioning. The compositions achieve autonomy as far as possible towards the pictured object and therefore ignore a central assumption of the classical architectural photography. With reference to the constructive painting the detailed treatment of colour and form receives priority. In his CANDELA-project Benjamin Monn focuses the change of perspective, which emphasizes the space composition and the constructive form more than a documentary copy of the building.

Right from the beginning, the focus of Benjamin A. Monn's photographic work concentrates on the occupation with architectural photography. Monn knowingly defies the genre's established aim - namely the documentation and identification of buildings - and works on a new definition of architectural photography. Since 2002 he is generating several groups of work parallel to each other. The photographer's aim for the series A-SYMMETRIE is the accurate recording of every single building. It focuses on the plain architectural form and the elaboration of linear structures and abstract form criterions. Light/dark contrasts and the switch between light and shadow as well as the metallic shining surfaces are in the main focus of his attention. Because of peoples' absence in order to serve as a measure- scale in the pictures, the buildings must be unhinged out of their functional structure. The architectures in Benjamin Monn's photos are presented in a space-, time- and functionless aesthetics. The design stands for itself.

The approach of a self-contained image composition proceeds in Monn's third group of work: established since 2004, the project FRAGMENTE is based on a new construction of architectural forming and space details on the computer. Afterwards, the digital produced photo is exposed on photo base paper. For the surface's construction of the black and white creations, architectural fragments are reflected once or several times. By repeating and reflecting the forms symmetrically, geometrical-ornamental patterns develop in a way, which serves rather the screen's structuring than the reproduction of a real layout. Consequently, the fragmental constructions don't simulate real space conditions, but create new futuristically inspired fictive spaces. For CASSIDA the photograph installed - for the very first time -two different parts of structure: Fragments out of Renzo Piano´s museum Paul Klee at Bern and pieces out of Tadao Ando´s Vitra Design museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. The non-scaled fragments' composition was created in a process of experiments, lasting for months, resembling a never-ending puzzle. In the end a figurative structure of a mask respectively robot was formed.

Beyond the examination of architectural forms and landscape design, the photographer deals with an advanced concept of portrait photographs. Under the title INTERAKTION he designs black-and-white photos of faces in a close- up view, which are linked, by double exposure, to ornamental and natural structures. The two- dimensionality of a totally colour reduced face interacts with the spatial and plane structures of branches or cracked glass and so abstracts the human countenance to a plane (facial) landscape.