The cruel glamour of the ordinary that enabled Beat Streuli
to win acclaim for street photography is a concept that also recalls Jeff
Wall and his departure from conceptualism and documentation. Much in the
way that Jeff
Wall before him introduced his enormous light boxes taken from
advertising, Beat Streuli also used the art world to visualize an opulence
not only in the image itself, but also in its presentation and
installation – which in his case meant huge prints and wall-sized slide
projections capable of competing with advertising photography. Streuli’s
strategy was to vie with the use of photography in the entertainment
industry, advertising, film, and on all the facades and storefront windows
of the city space – in other words, anywhere it reached a mass audience.
Furthermore, Streuli made the static image move; he intensified its
authority in the slow-motion projection of entire image series that
provided their own light, making the color and surface shine and radiate
all the more.
Beat
Streuli, Sydney 98, 1999
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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© Beat Streuli & Galerie Conrads,
Düsseldorf
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Yet it was a matter of subverting this competition by
seeing and showing something different, by seeing differently. In this
respect, it is interesting indeed that Streuli’s work not only bears an
affinity to advertising, but also to forensic photography. The way in
which he scans the street to record significant micro-occurrences, such as
a brief contact between two people or their hasty avoidance of one
another, recalls the new surveillance photography that hones in on
individuals in public space. Machines produce these images everywhere
around the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. One need only think
of Sydney 98 , one of Streuli’s works that shows two young women in
conversation carrying bulging plastic shopping bags. The scene, of course,
owes its effect to the photographer’s power of observation. In contrast to
the machine, which would have created this image by chance, Beat Streuli
recognizes the scenic quality of the moment, consciously seeks it out. In
any case, it’s clear from the works that he’s aiming for the greatest
possible degree of artistic influence on a given reality.
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Beat Streuli, New York 01, 2002
Deutsche
Bank Collection, (c)The Artist. Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich
And
yet – couldn’t the man in the suit emerging from the black background in New
York 01 have triggered the programmed attention of a surveillance
camera, have been picked out by it? Beat Streuli staged this image – with
the aid of the urban flow. Yet because evidence plays a crucial role in
it, this image not only speaks of beauty, but also of suspicion, prompted
by the man’s powerful elegance, the kind of glamour that usually gets
submerged in the ordinariness of the everyday. But Beat Streuli sees it,
records it, documents and stages it. Advertising and forensic photography
become accomplices in his conceptual system, which he describes as a
"simple story… minimal in terms of means, highly understandable and almost
even banal in direction." But in reality it is a highly complex,
fascinating theme rich in continuous development, differentiation, and a
self-reflective revision – Streuli’s ongoing formulation of a
multi-faceted global image of urban sensibility.
Beat
Streuli, Los Angeles, 2003
©Beat
Streuli, 2004 and Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf
The
sun is sparkling through the clouds, of course, as I’m leaving Beat
Streuli’s apartment. There’s even enough time for a short visit to the Art
Brussels. And while I’m walking down the street listening to the voice
mail on my cell phone, I suddenly realize that I could be one of Streuli’s
anonymous "stars" – that my picture in some idealized moment could shine
larger than life, while I myself will have long since disappeared into the
crowd.
Translation: Andrea Scrima
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