Clemens Kalischer

The Invisible Photographer

 

January 10 – February 22, 2009

 

One has to wait for the right moment to conduct a silent dialogue with the people.

(Clemens Kalischer)

 

Young people in the streets of New York, workers in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, village life, or refugees from Hitler's Europe with boxes and suitcases at the port of New York: Clemens Kalischer documented with his black-and-white photography unspectacular moments of everyday life. What is compelling about the snapshots is their immediacy and clarity. Kalischer shows us people in their social contexts that interest him and move him. His images tell stories that we do not know; yet these images spontaneously prompt us to invent and contemplate such stories.

 

As emotional as Kalischer’s perception of the world around him is, his view as an artist always remains distant and devoid of sentimentality and judgment. He interprets and does not comment; he reveals nothing, and implicates nothing. In that Kalischer never gets too close to the people he reproduces, he succeeds at remaining invisible as a photographer. Even in his moving series of photographs of refugees, Displaced Persons, he maintains distance as a “displaced person” himself, and does not interfere: the gestures of the people speak for themselves, no message from the artist disrupts the opposition of image subject and viewer.

 

A typical Kalischer photo sets no significant ranks between the viewer and the subject, it provides instead a feeling that the photographer had just picked out a moment in the stream of life and let it solidify in the emulsion.

(Miles Unger)

 

That the artist opposes all dogmas and isms is not just because of his biography; this resistance is based mainly on his self-image as a photographer: such filters hamper the direct, unbiased observation of the world.

 

Kalischer’s technically and artistically sophisticated photographs are strongly influenced by the architecture of a place; yet with few exceptions the location does not dominate, rather it always remains connected with the people who live and work, arrive or depart this place. Kalischer doesn’t force or arrange his subjects; he roams the environment in which he finds himself, takes notice of particular fleeting moments of normalcy and catches them with his camera. He has a lot of patience for these “silent dialogues” with people. Thus authentic images of our world are shown to the viewer, which partake in nothing questionable or false, because they know no manipulation, distortion, or deception.

 

Celebrities can be found only sporadically in Kalischer’s work. There are artists from his immediate environment: Leonard Bernstein, Pablo Casals, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oskar Kokoschka, Ornette Coleman, Max Roach, or Mahalia Jackson.

 

Clemens Kalischer is a characteristic representative of classic photography of the 20th century. Born in 1921 in Lindau and raised in Berlin, the Kalischer family had to leave Germany in 1933. He attended school in France until he was arrested in 1939. Three years in eight different camps followed. Thanks to an emergency visa sponsored by a charitable organization run by Eleanor Roosevelt, Kalischer was able to flee to the United States in 1942. In New York he studied photography at the New School and began his career as a photographer. His first job was with the Agence France Presse, for which he documented the last voyage of the SS Normandie. Soon after, he received commissions from the New York Times, a newspaper that he continues to work for today. His theme is first and foremost the streets and people of New York. His international breakthrough as a photographer came in 1955 with his participation in the exhibition “The Family of Man” at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Today Kalischer lives in Massachusetts.

Estella Kühmstedt (translated by Thea Miklowski)

 

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