PROJEKTION deals with the image archive of the advertising department of VEB Pentacon, the camera manufacturer of the GDR.
For this work, around 80 images were selected from the archive, which contains several 10,000 negatives, and questioned for their pictorial construction beyond their original function.
The work was created in cooperation with the Technische Sammlungen Dresden and at the invitation of the exhibition space bautzner69 (Dresden) – where the first presentation of the work also took place.
Since 2019 the work is part of the permanent exhibition in the historical rooms of the Technische Sammlungen Dresden.
by Andreas Krase
PROJECTION refers to several dimensions of the photographic: taking, fixing an image, reproducing it. PROJECTION can also denote the process of selection, the formation of a perception, a view. PROJECTION generally refers to the transmission of an idea.
Daniela Friebel looked into the Photographic Collection of the Technical Collections Dresden. In her research, she concentrated on the photographic legacy of the VEB Pentacon Dresden – the company of the state photographic industry, which until 1990 had its headquarters in the Ernemann Building, today's museum location. In her media-archaeologic work, she focused on the photographs taken in the company's advertising department since the early 1950s. Until then, these had remained almost hidden, as most of the photographs were only available as negatives and were therefore not accessible to the naked eye. Taken from the seclusion of the archive, transferred into very accurate tonal values, occasionally reproduced laterally reversed or even left as negative, many of the photographs offer strange objects and seemingly surreal constellations. Traces of manual image processing by means of adhesive montages and also coloured retouching paint intensify the alienation effect.
The rational formal world of the technical, viewed from a historical distance and in terms of its aesthetic substance, apparently unfolds its own part, the enigmatic. Daniela Friebel has selected photographs that are open to a variety of interpretations and retain their magical effect. In the form of a room-sized wall installation, the exhibition shows photographs, which are illuminated with projectors produced by VEB Pentacon, as well as two slide projections with images from the archive.
Andreas Krase
Kustos Fotografie / Kinematografie, Technische Sammlungen Dresden
