rainer hosch

NEW YORKNEW YORKRAINER HOSCH02.03.12 - 24.03.12

“NYC 10.08.10 - 11:35:12 AM”/ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT/43 X 56 CM/2010

RAINER HOSCH / MARCH 2012 / PAGE 2/3

PAINTING WITH THE CAMERA Photography is all about seeing, about finding the remarkable in the ordinary. It does not have much to do with the subject itself, but with the way the photographer sees the subject. Because of this, the work of the painter and that of the photogra-pher is closely connected - they both present us to their personal view of the world, colored by the way they look at it. Rainer Hosch has a powerful, sensitive look at his surroundings and with this, he manages to almost magically capture the mood of the places he travels to.

The fact that Gallery Poulsen is now showing the first Rainer Hosch solo exhibition in Denmark is a logical event. The first time we showed Rainer Hosch was back in 2009, when he joined the sum-mer exhibition ”The Buzz of Urban Surroundings”. Everybody who came to see the show was imme-diately drawn to his photographs. Since then, Rainer has kept working on the New York street series and we have been walking around restless and excited, waiting for him to finish the project. Finally, here it is! In total, 68 photographs from the pulsating metropol, that I am so fond of.

The Rainer Hosch project is in perfect harmony with the fascination that I have for New York City.

The compelling force the city radiates. The glam-orous and mysterious, but also the tough and ex-hausting atmosphere. They can build just as many miles-tall skyscrapers in Dubai, but compared to New York it has no effect. The pulse of the city is incredible. The Skyline, light, architecture, street system, signs, taxis, po-lice officers. And not least the people, all kinds in every color. Rainer Hosch really captures this New York presence - it’s just like being there. Many are photographing New York, but very few people have his eye on and insight into the city, where he has lived for the past 15 years. There is an inner necessity in his project, he simply can not resist photographing the people he passes in the street of New York.

I am happy to be sharing the gallery with all the people that populate his photos in this exhibition called:

NEW YORK NEW YORK

Welcome

Morten Poulsen

Most of us know the feeling of discomfort when being photographed. We try to maintain a certain naturalness, but when the camera points our way, our expression and posture inevitably betray us. Comment-ing on this phenomenon, French semiotician Roland Barthes wrote, “As soon as I feel observed by the lens, everything changes: I put myself in a pose, immediately altering my body, transforming myself in advance into image.

No one is transformed into image in advance, however, in the street photography of Rainer Hosch, because no one knows they’re being photographed. There are no poses to please the photographer, no shifts of expression, no shying away. On the contrary, we are pre-sented with the real thing — people in the streets of New York, transformed into image at the precise moment the photographer, a small camera hidden in his hand, decides.

The one-legged man sitting hunched in his wheelchair is not per-forming — we see him as he is, at this very moment, in this very alley. The muscle man with the tattoos and bleached hair, the one who has just come out of the David Barton Gym — he flexes his muscles, but not for us. The woman in the dark coat, raising a cup to her mouth as she quietly observes the silvery reflection of a passing train — she strikes no pose for the camera lens behind her back.

Often enough, it is the seemingly insignificant detail that draws our attention, enchanting us. The street photographer’s primary task is to discover the extraordinary in ordinary moments of urban life, in-stantly, intuitively pressing the shutter and preserving the moment in a small box. Henri Cartier-Bresson described the challenge thus: “Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

The street photography genre sometimes makes a social-political claim, focusing on waste, slums and the excluded — everything that’s not welcome on the glittering streets of a metropolis. But Rain-er Hosch has no such agenda. He shoots it all, from the fancy stores to the rough side streets to the artificially lit subways. He is inter-ested in the motion of the city, the spirit of the place and of all the thousands of unique, flesh-and-blood individuals bustling through it, each putting a special imprint on the urban landscape of New York, every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Rainer never judges them, though, and we as viewers are free to explore the pho-tographs with our own eyes, deciding for ourselves whether the proj-ect is raw and melancholy, edifying and life affirming or a mix of ups and downs.

Mag.art. Tom Hermansen

RAINER HOSCH

NEW YORKNEW YORK


“NYC 05.27.09 - 01:49:50 PM”/ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT/43 X 56 CM/2009

‘MY DAD WAS A PHOTOGRAPHER. HE DIED

WHEN I WAS 11 YEARS OLD. I TOLD MY MOM,

‘I WANT TO KEEP THE DOG, AND I WANT HIS CAMERAS’

I WANTED TO CARRY ON HIS LEGACY’

RAINER HOSCH, 2012

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‘I WOULD LOVE TO RECORD EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING I PASS’


RAINER HOSCH, 2012

‘THE PROJECT IS A KIND OF FROZEN REALITY -

I RECORD SOMETHING THAT’S ACTUALLY

HAPPENING, BUT I FREEZE THE MOMENT,

SO WE CAN LOOK AT IT MANY YEARS FROM NOW’

RAINER HOSCH, 2012

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‘I ENJOY RECORDING THE ENERGY OF NEW YORK, BUT MY PASSION IS PORTRAYING WHAT THAT ENERGY DOES TO EACH PERSON WHO WALKS THROUGH ITS STREETS’


RAINER HOSCH, 2012

‘BEING A PHOTOGRAPHER HAS BEEN A LONG-TERM PLAN. I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ELSE, I DON’T HAVE ANY OTHER TALENT’


RAINER HOSCH, 2012

The world is fluid and transient, not least in vibrant New York City, but with his unique brand of street photography, Rainer Hosch presents a blockage in the flow. In the truest sense, he freezes the moment, that instant of time that has already elapsed.

To draw this immediate, authentic portrait of people in the great me-tropolis, Rainer uses a small, handheld camera. He is the fly leaving the wall, floating in and out among people. A few times he has been found out, provoking aggressive reactions from his subjects, but usually he manages to maneuver through the crowd unnoticed.

Gallery Poulsen has traveled to New York to select 68 of these impor-tant New York photographs for its next Copenhagen exhibition. We see Rainer’s street photography as an expression of his love for man-kind’s diversity, and from March 2, you can experience that love for yourself in the show: >>NEW YORK NEW YORK<<

Rainer Hosch was born in Vienna in 1970. Since childhood he has known what he wanted to be. “My dad was a photographer,” he ex-plains. “He died when I was 11 years old. I told my mom, ‘I want to keep the dog, and I want his cameras.’ I wanted to carry on his lega-cy. Being a photographer is a long-term plan. I don’t know anything else. I don’t have any other talent.”

Rainer studied photography at the Institute for Teaching and Research in Graphic Arts in Vienna and at UCLA before moving to New York in 1997. He is represented at the National Museum of Photography in Denmark, but this is his first solo show in the country.

Gallery Poulsen, 2012

PRESS RELEASE

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rainer hosch

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