Harry Kramer

Catalogue  „Filmrolle/Thermovision“, Kassel 1983

Kryptographic works by Stephan Reusse

Leaving shadows

For the fettered individuals in Plato´s Cave, the shadows of their captivity were more real than the reality that projected these shadows. Whoever releases these pictures must come to terms with the scorched nature of these „copies“. Here the unchanging is much more durable than the changelings of the variable world. In this construct Plato questions the reliability of our perception. Cultural developments have complicated and added a new density to questions having to do with the relationship between an image and it´s copy, reality and fiction.

The Thermovision visually concretizes the „shadows“ of heat generated by people and objects long after they´ve left the scene. It furnishes agressive copies of a reality that is lost to us. The past is made visible with the assistance of a thermographic camera. The photographic image is nothing else than the visualization of an idea. Our experience is deeply based in perception and on a frontal view of images. The Thermovision shows us the shadow of a shadow that is ordinarily outside of this perception.

„Cogito ergo sum“. Descartes didn´t believe his eyes and instead let his thinking lead to the proof of existence. If each higher level of the abstraction is evidence of an increased intellectuel power, then the copies found through Thermovision have much more validity than the visible wave spectrum.

Haeey Kramer 1983