DAS WATT: David Batchelder | Alfred Ehrhardt
Alfred
Ehrhardt’s first major photographic work DAS WATT (The Tidelands)
(1933–1936) is an ode to nature. It is among the most outstanding visual
achievements of the avant-garde photography of the 1930s and represents the crème de la crème of his photographic oeuvre. The artistic quality of this
series remains unequalled, even among the masters of New Objectivity
photography. Created
during Josef Albers’s preliminary course at the Bauhaus in Dessau, the work reveals
Ehrhardt’s fascination with the structures in the sand that
emerged every day anew, formed by wind and water. These reminded him of his
teachings on the nature of materials, in which his students were required to
learn to discern the “structure, texture, and consistency” of materials. Ehrhardt’s concept for the image
series was to look for the natural laws in the synergy of nature’s forces by
comparing the form variations created anew each day. His typology of sandy-reef
formations suggests a conscious connection between microcosm and macrocosm. In
contrast to Alfred Ehrhardt, US photographer David Batchelder (b. 1939) purposely
uses a digital camera to coax astounding sand formations out of the coastlines
of the Isle of Palms near his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. Batchelder
asserts these would have remained hidden to him using analog technology: “My
ability to see has grown because I have been able to make and see many
thousands of photographs. My vision has grown as a result. I see so many
interesting things in the sand now that were there before, but beyond my vision.”
Batchelder purposely addresses human perception: the abstracting of the nature
motif, reduced to a minute amount of information, generates inner visions. It
seems nearly impossible not to discover something concrete in these images.
Something within us strives to see faces, figures, a landscape, or a galaxy,
and yet we are only looking down on a limited stretch of beach. Unlike Ehrhardt, Batchelder
is not interested in the laws of structure, but in the chaotic, strange,
surreal, non-rational, in short: the world of dreams and the imagination.
Batchelder’s play-like freeness contrasts with Ehrhardt’s objective structural
order—science versus poetry.
Ehrhardt’s first major photographic work DAS WATT (The Tidelands)
(1933–1936) is an ode to nature. It is among the most outstanding visual
achievements of the avant-garde photography of the 1930s and represents the crème de la crème of his photographic oeuvre. The artistic quality of this
series remains unequalled, even among the masters of New Objectivity
photography. Created
during Josef Albers’s preliminary course at the Bauhaus in Dessau, the work reveals
Ehrhardt’s fascination with the structures in the sand that
emerged every day anew, formed by wind and water. These reminded him of his
teachings on the nature of materials, in which his students were required to
learn to discern the “structure, texture, and consistency” of materials. Ehrhardt’s concept for the image
series was to look for the natural laws in the synergy of nature’s forces by
comparing the form variations created anew each day. His typology of sandy-reef
formations suggests a conscious connection between microcosm and macrocosm. In
contrast to Alfred Ehrhardt, US photographer David Batchelder (b. 1939) purposely
uses a digital camera to coax astounding sand formations out of the coastlines
of the Isle of Palms near his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. Batchelder
asserts these would have remained hidden to him using analog technology: “My
ability to see has grown because I have been able to make and see many
thousands of photographs. My vision has grown as a result. I see so many
interesting things in the sand now that were there before, but beyond my vision.”
Batchelder purposely addresses human perception: the abstracting of the nature
motif, reduced to a minute amount of information, generates inner visions. It
seems nearly impossible not to discover something concrete in these images.
Something within us strives to see faces, figures, a landscape, or a galaxy,
and yet we are only looking down on a limited stretch of beach. Unlike Ehrhardt, Batchelder
is not interested in the laws of structure, but in the chaotic, strange,
surreal, non-rational, in short: the world of dreams and the imagination.
Batchelder’s play-like freeness contrasts with Ehrhardt’s objective structural
order—science versus poetry.
Image gallery
Alfred Ehrhardt, Spuren fließenden Wassers im Sandboden, Watt, 1933-1936, Silbergelatineabzug, © bpk / Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftungtineabzug
David Batchelder, Creature #17, 2012, Archival Giclée Print on Ilford Pearl Paper, © David Batchelder
Curator: Dr. Christiane Stahl
Additional information
Opening hours:
Tue–Sun 11–6 pm
Thu 11–9 pm
Admission free
Opening on April 26, 2019 at 7 pm, admission free
Tue–Sun 11–6 pm
Thu 11–9 pm
Admission free
Opening on April 26, 2019 at 7 pm, admission free
Participating artists
Alfred Ehrhardt
David Batchelder
