Stillstehendes
Project by Stefan Fuhrer
March 6, 2026 – April 2026
A brief internal dialogue
The term stil leven (Dutch: stil = motionless and leven = existence) for a painting first appears in a Dutch inventory around 1650. Is it this motionless existence that you are looking for in your photographs?
Not quite. Of course, I am fascinated by this motionless existence, but I am even more interested in the minimal events that manifest themselves primarily in the changing light.
Her pictures show black apples, withered blossoms. Are you watching death unfold?
Yes, absolutely, but paradoxically, by capturing the moment, death is at least suspended in the image. It therefore remains only in our imagination.
So, a game with the viewer's imagination?
Yes, but also with my own; I remember what the fresh apple looked like, and I imagine what the apple might look like in two months.
Does that mean you're considering photographing your chosen object again at a later date?
Yes, but postponing also means that I might miss the ideal moment. That is, I try to tame chance with my vision of the ideal situation.
Which of course cannot succeed?
Of course not, they are always new attempts to capture the ideal moment.
Isn't this attempt to capture the perfect moment also what makes photography so fascinating?
Absolutely, this balancing act is captivating for me. It's often the smallest deviations that make the difference between a good and a bad picture.
However, many uncertainties could be eliminated by working, for example, in a studio with controlled lighting conditions.
Yes, that would be one possibility, but it's not my way of working. I work almost exclusively with daylight. Aside from the fact that I prefer this type of light, working with daylight also always involves the element of chance that I value.
In his 1968 advice for young artists, John Baldessari wrote: "Whatever you decide to do, remember to keep it simple and have an idea of what you're getting at." What are you getting at?
I'm interested in in-between spaces, ambiguity, and non-places. With my photographic work, I try to create such in-between spaces. You could also call them places of possibility. It's actually a paradox, because by choosing the image composition and determining the exposure time, I exclude many possibilities. However, when viewing photographs, one often begins to reflect on what came before and after, as well as on the areas outside the frame, and it is precisely this process that ultimately leads to these places of possibility.
What message do you want to convey by depicting these intermediate spaces? Or, to put it another way: What do such places mean to you?
For me, these are spaces of freedom, the beginnings of stories that I or any viewer can continue in my own way.