The Big Picture (Englische Edition)

For many years, Thomas Kellner focused on architecture and sights from all over the world, but in this work, created in the summer of 2014, he turns to one of the most breathtaking landscape motifs on earth: the Grand Canyon.

Kellner photographs the subject from several perspectives and thus breaks it down into its individual parts. He then puts together the contacts in their original size to form an overall composition. Since 1997 he has exclusively used the contact sheet prints for his highly individual compositions. The distinguishing feature of this mounting technique are the horizontal black stripes between the individual rows of images, which represent the consecutive numbering of the negative. The image dimension is also derived from the number of films used in the creation process, as it is a collage with 1:1 contact prints.

The Big Picture consists of 60 films of 36 shots each, i.e. 2160 images taken one after the other. The work is full of brown, red and green color elements from the rocks of the Grand Canyon and therefore offers an overwhelming sight. Viewed up close, it shows the landscape in detail and viewed a little further away, the detailed shots create a coherent panorama.

Kellner transfers the international trend of deconstructivism from architecture to photography by photographing buildings, people and landscapes, fragmenting them and then combining them into a heterogeneous conglomerate of forms. When photographing the Grand Canyon, however, he forgoes any playful intervention in the composition of the individual parts. Kellner depicts this incredible landscape as it is and lets it speak for itself.