GORGEOUS OPULENCE

Rafael Neff set out on travels through Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland, and returned with photographs of cloisters and opera houses. For four years now, Rafael Neff has been photographing opera houses, theaters, and libraries around the world. Like children we get lost in the opulent scenography of warm colors and telltale statues from times long ago, spellbound by all the magnificence. With wondering and astonished eyes we remain fascinated by the opulent cornucopia of baroque ornament. Whether in the Benedictine abbey in Ottobeuren, the Canons Regular of St. Augustine in Neustift, the Premonstratensian cloister in Bad Schussenried, the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples splendidly rebuilt after a devastating fire, the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Opéra Garnier in Paris, the Bayerisches Staatstheater in Munich, or the Opera House in Zurich: the light-filled opera houses tell us of all of the dramas played out on their stages. We can almost hear the arias from the libretti of the lives sung within these walls. Such spaces are a joy for every aesthetic eye and free spirit, because they go far beyond the individual in that they have existed long before us and will present aesthetic pleasure with their opulence long after our time.


GLACIERS AND BEACHES

The nearly unpopulated beach stage is animated with the choreography of colored swabs, the light is perfectly arranged, the protagonists have their performance. As a matter of fact, there are only beach chairs, but they have their own individuality in the photographs of Rafael Neff. Simultaneously, they contain themselves, taking nearly nothing from their surroundings and appear to be presenting the brightly colored, striped fabric with which they are budding, their shadows playing on the rough surface of the sand. Before the first vacationers come and profanely misuse them as sun protection, they stage for themselves and any other chance passersby, a Capriccio of light and color, fragmented and flirtatiously abstract as if trying to have a dialogue with the cloudless blue of the sky, which the photographer acknowledges with an even expanse. Rafael Neff’s photographs are impressive in the best sense. He draws nearer to his objects in various ways and animates his impressions through the contrast of the focused and unfocused, proximity and distance, surfaces and depths. The pictures seem like bleached out memories of celebrations from a long ago childhood filled with sea noises, and summer guests. The personal is has long ago been removed, leaving only the furnishings, old-fashioned, wonderful and timeless.

Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch


CHRONOGRAPHIC WATCHES

Rafael Neff grants us a rarely seen view inside some of the finest chronographic watches – unveiling incredibledetails. With the ornamental density and the subtle colors, the perfectly formed and worked metals reveal beauty in functionality. The close-ups of modern clockwork, produced in the century-old tradition, are a special kind of testament.