Frost

photographs by Hans Danuser. Text by Urs Stahel.
Scalo, Zurich, 2001.
120 pp., photographs. Trade.
ISBN: 3-08247-54-3.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Hans Danuser (1953) is one of the best known photographers in Switzerland. He started with experiments with photographic emulsions in the 1980s. Since the early '90s he has pursued a course which takes him along the borders between art and science. In 1991, he started a series of images of embryos, called 'In Vivo'. The present book collects a selection of images from an exhibition held in New York in May-June 2002. It consists of three series of photographs: 'Frozen Embryo Series', 'Strangled Body' and 'Erosion'. In between the series, apparently nonsensical words are printed in bold typeface, one or two a page. On second reading they appear to be German and English dipping rhymes.

In the first series, 'Frozen Embryo Series', one sees images of grey surfaces with hardly any feeling of depth. Seemingly random white and chalk-coloured lines wriggle on the page. No clear structure is visible, neither from a distance nor when the book is tilted are glanced at obliquely. Nothing indicates if these are details of larger, similar surfaces or if they are images of remote structures. After a while, unevenly formed and chaotically dispersed crystal-like contours become visible. Ranging from dark grey to anthracite to almost black, the photographs offer no point nor details upon which the eye might find rest or focus. A sense of desolation prevails. Only the title gives us a clue, but even after careful scrutiny, no recognisable embryonic forms are to be found. (Not surprising, since the title only refers to the series' historic origins.) These pictures only show the frozen surfaces of sheets of ice used in scientific experiments with embryos. Is this a metaphor for the violent beginning of life, or of our existence before it even came into being?

At the other end of a lifetime, after death, what remains is the dead body. In his "Strangled Bodies" series Danuser focuses extremely closely on the skin of his subjects, who have all met with these violent ends. Again, the pictures show nothing but deep greys and almost-blacks, revealing the structure of the skin, the follicles and the pores close to the bruises and traces of the strangulation. Inspection reveals no drama, no story, no forensic reconstruction, but the lack of light and the depth of the shades strongly impart the loss of all hope.

In the "Erosion" series, Danuser addresses landscapes in the same unemotional, closely-focused, richly grey and black way. Only, now, any suggestion of distance, size or scale is lost. We could be looking at a mountain range, a heights, the side of a cliff, the surface of some forlorn planet or the details of a slab of slate. This is what and where we were, long before and long after life, the ultimate beginning and end on a geological or even galactic timescale. One might mistakenly get the impression that Danusers world is depressing and lightless, negative and devoid of meaning. However, that is beside the point. Danuser proves, willingly or not, that nature is neither beautiful nor repulsive, neither significant nor meaningless, just like the words used in the dipping rhymes in the book. And art, like science, only reveals the beauty we want to see or the sense we want to make. Nature is neither powerful nor weak, it is neither depressing nor exhilarating, it is there for the human mind to explore, depict and transform or to be used as a mirror of our existence and its boundaries. And violence, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder - in this case, the photographer.