Author Description

Austrian fine art photographer Werner Schnelle (b. 1942) has long been fascinated with alternative ways of reproducing an image, whether it is a photogram, a negative image, a solarized abstraction or a manipulated Polaroid print. His tools are his cameras, darkroom, chemistry, printing paper, and imagination. The end results are unique images made without the use of sophisticated digital software or inkjet printers. Schnelles images are often made directly on photo paper exposed while in a large format camera, and then hand-developed and manipulated in the darkroom. His love of the nonnarrative aspect of photography grew from his interest in the first alternative images created by the great photographers of the 1920s and 30s, such as Man Ray and Lszl Moholy-nagy. Schnelles own work began in the late 1970s and continues into the early twenty-first century. Although the artist is not internationally known, his challenging use of the photographic medium makes this first-time survey an engaging and thoughtful journey into the abstraction of the image.