Visual equations of extreme precision

Photographer Robert Götzfried is an aesthetic perfectionist. Since 2003 he has dealt intensively with photography of modern architecture in which he aims to accentuate a structure’s graphic intensity. He favors places that have been technically and statically perfectly planned; exactly when they are empty, their cool beauty and symmetry seem to convey their souls. These include cinemas, subway stations, tunnels, and facades with extreme precision of graphic detail. He prefers to show the otherwise peopled urban locations empty and concentrates on their geometric effects.

His series Olympic Stadium and Roller Coaster are emblematic of his photographic attention to detail.

Götzfried portrays the stadium in its stunning architectural presence once abandoned by the sports fans and cleaned up. The tiers, rowed with colorful bucket seats, create a kind of graphic pattern. The intersection of architecture and design is in fact central to his photographic work. From his perspective, he is able to order architectonic structures strictly and systematically in order finally to reduce than to minimally pure surfaces, colors, and formats.

The series Roller Coaster is of purely aesthetic importance to the minimalist Götzfried. With this purist perspective he puts a new graphically formal twist on a topic known for its thrills and intoxicating speed. Perfectly cropped sections reduce the spiraling and twisting tracks and loops to such an extreme that they seem to be completely freed from any supporting structure on the ground.

Rather than chase the craving for a thrill, Götzfried uses this motif to turn our visual habits on their heads: there are no visitors to be seen and rarely a rollercoaster car in sight – his daytime shots forego the buggies completely. But it is just this reduction that arouses a fascinating curiosity and provokes a change of perspective. The eye follows the fleeting traces of light spellbound along the gleaming curves of glowing neon before the dark night sky.

His prints go beyond any mere fascination with technology, placing emphasis on the reductionist beauty and expressiveness of light and design, color and form. He himself simply calls his works “visual equations that always add up.”

Christina Wendenburg