Works
untitled, Ahmedabad 2015,
from the book project "Karma Driver"
Karma Driver
Publication at FOTOHOF edition 2018
A photobook like a roller coaster drive into the vivid chaos of street life in the Indian megacities New Delhi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Bangalore.
In all parts of the society I could see the traces of westernization and on the other side I could feel the deep routedness of the citizens in the traditional Indian culture. The often crazy contradictions in the urban sceneries are showing the permanent competition between the different value systems. Billboards, advertising campaigns, film- and election posters, fashion images are mixed together with omnipresent god idols and historical symbols in the cityscape.
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Catch
Publication at Kettler Verlag 2015
The curiosity to experience, the search for communication, to long for images that tear us out of the routine consumption of normal media image clutter: images with irritating cutouts, surprising compositions and unusual perspectives. Such an irritation is necessary to reflect upon what we encounter in everyday life. A more mysterious way of seeing evokes questioning of how to look and thus penetrate further into the various layers of the visible. The world as a collage will not dissolve in a unique punch line but rather expand itself in disparity. Space between things is very important. It leaves us room for imagination. The images themselves become catalysts to the experience diverse perception. They extend the visions for the discovery of the seemingly trivial——Catch!
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Mitten im Westen
A Journey of Discovery in the Rhein-Sieg-Area, 2009
Dirk Gebhardt, Axel Thünker, Stefan Worring and Wolfgang Zurborn are creating an exciting image of the region between the rivers Rhein and Sieg near Cologne and Bonn. With different photographic perspectives they sensitize the viewer similarly to historical, social and cultural aspects in the middle of the west of Germany.
The book is published 2009 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne
ISBN: 978-3-462-03819-4
more info and slide.show
China! Which China?
2006
In June 2006 I visited Beijing and Shanghai. The challenge of the encounter with the unfamiliar world was to transform the personal experience of the highly complex and interlaced parallel worlds of these "Megacities" into an individual picture language which should not keep the unknown in the realm of the exotic but which discovers the nearness in the strange.
more info and slide.show
Drift
1999 - 2005
“Drift” is representing a way of seeing the fractured
modern world in its overlapping images and contexts. I am
interested in finding the sublime in the ridiculous condition
of modern life with a Dadaist awareness of the found object.
With a surrealist sense of humour I am creating a collision
montage of juxtaposed, multi-layered images combined on a
single picture plane. Disconnected from the purely functional
sense our every-day surrounding appears in a much more sensual
way.
more info and slide
show
Amsterdam
Photographs with Nokia 6680 mobile phone, 2005
In may 2005 I had the possibility of exploring Amsterdam for the magazine
"Blogga", using a mobile phone in order to make pictures. The
scenery on the street being lively and chaotic at the same time intrigued
me. I was amazed by the possibilities using such a tool being able to
react that spontaneous and flexible. It resulted in a work, which leaves
lots of space for subjective impressions, but at the same time it's telling
something about the place where the picture has been taken.
more info and slide show
LUsionen
2004
The series "LUsionen" has been realised
in the context of the exhibition project "5XLU".
The art institution "Kunstverein Ludwigshafen" commissioned
five artists to do an urban research into the industrial city
of Ludwigshafen.
Ludwigshafen is a city without a historical tradition, existing
since the chemical industry started there. In my photography
I avoid to confirm this image as a city only defined by the
industry, because I am more interested to show places in the
public area, where people try to create their own small world,
where you can see their desires and sometimes their failing.
It’s not possible for me to see the urban space without
the imagery of mass culture, so I capture situations from
every-day-life in my photographs that illustrate the interwoveness
of the omnipresent icons of media with our real life.
more info and slide
show
Terra Incognita
2002
In his exhibition "Terra Incognita" Wolfgang Zurborn
tracks down the staging of
public places which are the setting of the “Stadttheater”,
Bielefeld’s municipal
theatre and opera house.
Zurborn‘s compositions of harsh and sometimes glowing
colours make us see
everyday life with different eyes. Details photographed from
obliques angles
and paradoxical reflections of interiors and exteriors highlight
the platforms of
public life. The curtain is up and we are guided onto the
stage and behind the
backdrop, where the stage machinery of the city is only partially
hidden from
view.
(by Peter V. Brinkemper)
more info and slide show
dressur real
1986-2000
In May 2001, the book dressur real with photographs
from the past 14 years has been published by J. Strauss in
Potsdam.
Images from the different bodies of work melt together in
an almost film like
montage. Enriched with ironic breaks, they form a complex
narration of
everyday scenes in a world full of media myths. Images of
animals play an
important role in advertising. They serve our longing for
an archaic experience
of nature, serving us with imitation of all different shapes,
tamed to
consumable, bite-sized measures.
This act of dressage constitutes an allegory for perception
within a maze of
simulations.The photographs of this book understand themselves
as a
construction of reality and therefore also as a dressage of
reality. The
artificiality of the light, the irritation of a fragmented
view and the play with the
coincidence, when still images form out of a flow of overwhelming
impressions,
stand up against a false sense of naturalness, which, with
the growing loss of
real nature, is propagated even more by the advertising world.
more jnfo and slide show
Bilder, die noch fehlten
Missing Pictures, 2000
curated by Gabriele Honnef-Harling and Prof. Klaus Honnef
"21 internationally known photographers, both from art and advertising backgrounds, hindsight a fresh view of people with disabilities in their exhibition 'Bilder, die noch fehlten'. They offered a never experienced way of looking at the individuality and dignity of a human being that is not 'disabled' by the stereotypes of perception, which dominate our collective picture memory".
(From the press text)
more info and slide show
Im Zentrum der Geschwindigkeit,
In the Middle of the Speed, 1994-1996
The building of the channel tunnel has been a symbol of the
construction of Europe and the development of its territory.
Key parts in this development are high-speed communication
and traffic networks.
Over the past 10 years the Centre Regional de la Photographie
Nord Pas-de-Calais commissioned 25 photographers to portray
the multiple changes of the region in their very personal
style. The true potential of the already realised books shows
in the impressive list of previous participants who already
took part in the project La Mission Photographique Transmanche:
Josef Koudelka, Bernard Plossu, Olivo Barbieri, Martin Parr,
Lewis Baltz, Bruce Gilden, Marilyn Bridges etc.
Wolfgang Zurborn approached the brief in an almost archaeological
way. Similar to digging in sediments of cultural inheritance,
he discovered substantial layers with his camera, which describe
the actual subject "tunnel". But not only that,
he also documented the far more complicated socio-historic
connections and contradictions.
(Denis Brudna in PHOTONEWS 11/1996)
more info and slide show
Im Labyrinth der Zeichen
In the Labyrinth of Signs, 1991-1993
Fragments of the real every-day-worlds are combined to collages
to make signs, materials, surfaces, colours and lines start
playing their own game beyond the limitations of the single
picture segment. The enigma's sense is that there is no solution
offered.
Being animated by the visual appeal of the combination of
pictures, the viewer is encouraged to read the collages, to
complete the fragments by means of his/her own imagination
and to compare the complex net of formal and contentual connections
with his/her own modes of perception.
"What in these pictures is real and what fictious, what
is natural and what is constructed?" This question on
the one hand evokes a healthy, sceptical distance towards
the authenticity of documentary photography, but on the other
hand makes the recipient resistant against the suggestive
effects of pictures that intend to overwhelm by only addressing
themselves to emotions.
more jnfo and slide show
Photo Walls Neumarkt
1987/2004
As one of the first photographic works in the public space in 1987 the "Fotowände Neumarkt" by Stefan Worring and Wolfgang Zurborn were installed in the subway station Neumarkt in Cologne.
Due to the renovation of the station 2004, which was necessary for raising the platforms, the original walls must be removed, but could be reconstructed as light boxes thanks to the conception of the architect Kay Trint.
more info and slide show
Menschenbilder - Bildermenschen
People Pictures – Picture People, 1986-93
In this project Wolfgang Zurborn examines the massive influence
of imagery and sign language on public space; the semiotic
symbiosis of signifier and human being as part of a social
choreography. Menschenbilder means the flood of single impressions
and overall perceptions at mass events that overwhelm us in
their persistency and restrict our ability to act and perceive.
Photographic discoveries amidst an accumulation of rites,
ceremonies, cult and demonstration, in the heat of an election
campaign, en route in procession or the street carnival, under
a bright blue sky at an amusement park or at pop concerts.
(Peter V. Brinkemper in the catalogue of the Otto-Steinert
Preis 1979-1998)
more info and slide show
Vorgarten der Illusionen
Front Garden of Illusions, 1981-1984
In the series Vorgarten der Illusionen I combined black&white photographs from amusement parcs in Germany with images from the Carnival in Cologne and parcs and front gardens in Dortmund and Castrop Rauxel.
More info and slede show
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