Photographs by female students of the subject Art and Media
of the University of Oldenburg

The exploration of a place and a medium was the task of the one-week compact phase of a university exercise by female art students at the University of Oldenburg in March of this year: experiencing the Oldenburg castle garden (whose 200th birthday is being celebrated this year) in all its exciting facets, exposing oneself to this place over a longer period of time, approaching spectacular and unspectacular motifs, perceiving them intensively, selecting them and capturing them photographically using a simple black box, a camera obscura, was the centre of the exercise.

The castle garden was seen as a historical and social location, romantic and modern, as a place of designed nature and integrated architecture. The tension between natural form and construction, between the garden and the surrounding city skyline, the relationship between inside and outside, between contemplative, relaxed tranquillity and disturbingly eerie associations was particularly stimulating.
Playing with the variability of the camera, with perspectives and exposure times, but also with chance and deliberate intervention in the photographic process has led to very individualised image results. The palace garden became the backdrop for staged scenes, telling stories or being reflected in barely recognisable fading traces. Familiar views and motifs become blurred and in motion or dissolve into graphic-constructivist forms of the photographic negative.
Visual conventions, e.g. the perception of nature emphasising the depth of space in conventional landscape photography, recede behind a subjective artistic experience of appropriation. The palace garden is no longer a sight to be viewed from a fixed distance and perspective (walking on the lawn is forbidden!), but becomes the impulse and part of an intensive participatory aesthetic process.
The result is 14 black and white photographs - strange-looking views of a seemingly familiar place.

Participating students:
Maria Albers
Janina Bohlen
Janina Bergmann
Lena Broekmanns
Eva-Maria Evers
Julia Gorzitzke
Linda Berssen
Johanna Maibaum
Julia Vehstedt
Laura Wacker
Samanta Jane Büchner
Sara Yüksel
Angelique Schröttke
Kristina Wedeken

Lecturer: Sabine Wallach, University of Oldenburg, Art and Media

Exhibition at the LMO, Schloss Oldenburg, Schlossplatz 1, Tue-Sun 10am-6pm

Further exhibitions on the castle garden: www.schlossgarten2014.de