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Bent Szameitat Photo artist
Portrait
Bent is our specialist for moments in motion and extreme formats. His filmographies and works of art, such as the camera which he built, can often be seen in exhibitions here in Hamburg.
Unusual "tools", perspectives and luminous sources are applied effectively not only in his artistic works, but also in his advertising images.
The artist about his work:
"Every photographer can influence his pictures. The scope is almost inexhaustible. In my works I plumb the depths of the field of art, technology, reality and perception. My filmografies translate the 3-dimensionality of space and the time factor into the 2-dimensions of photography. The result are exhibits that define anew the term reality.
Streets, buildings, public parks and squares, fields, meadows and water unfold unexpected dramas in picture. Grotesque scenes, oases of peace, hours of movement - each picture is both conceived and accidental production at the same time.
I have been working for many years on the development of innovative photographic technologies. Borders and limits are crossing places for me. My works need space. They unfold their true effect when mounted on long walls, in surroundings that support and challenge the normal way of looking at things.
My artistic work began at an age of 14, when I began taking macro photographs of little stones, eroded by the wind and about to collapse. Since then I've been searching for unusual perspectives in order to give subjects a new, unspent face.
In 1978 I started painting, which for a couple of years was more interesting to me than photography. After my apprenticeship as a photographer, the light artist Ingo Sikorski and I began to strike a new path. Blurrings, wrong exposures, multiple exposures, etc. were used to zero out the small picture pattern. To expose and understand a small picture film as one single image was our intention. Picturing reality and giving its viewer more than "optical feed" - but sense and soul.
During that time the first filmography emerged from a drive through the Elbtunnel; I exposed a film while winding it back. I never forgot that image and started to develop, respectively alter an appropriate camera. Continous enhancements of that camera and an alteration of a Linhof Technica followed in order to improve quality and allow long exposures and night photographs. As to use that camera for studio shots, too, I built diverse rotation mechanisms and a module for exact velocity control."
Unusual "tools", perspectives and luminous sources are applied effectively not only in his artistic works, but also in his advertising images.
The artist about his work:
"Every photographer can influence his pictures. The scope is almost inexhaustible. In my works I plumb the depths of the field of art, technology, reality and perception. My filmografies translate the 3-dimensionality of space and the time factor into the 2-dimensions of photography. The result are exhibits that define anew the term reality.
Streets, buildings, public parks and squares, fields, meadows and water unfold unexpected dramas in picture. Grotesque scenes, oases of peace, hours of movement - each picture is both conceived and accidental production at the same time.
I have been working for many years on the development of innovative photographic technologies. Borders and limits are crossing places for me. My works need space. They unfold their true effect when mounted on long walls, in surroundings that support and challenge the normal way of looking at things.
My artistic work began at an age of 14, when I began taking macro photographs of little stones, eroded by the wind and about to collapse. Since then I've been searching for unusual perspectives in order to give subjects a new, unspent face.
In 1978 I started painting, which for a couple of years was more interesting to me than photography. After my apprenticeship as a photographer, the light artist Ingo Sikorski and I began to strike a new path. Blurrings, wrong exposures, multiple exposures, etc. were used to zero out the small picture pattern. To expose and understand a small picture film as one single image was our intention. Picturing reality and giving its viewer more than "optical feed" - but sense and soul.
During that time the first filmography emerged from a drive through the Elbtunnel; I exposed a film while winding it back. I never forgot that image and started to develop, respectively alter an appropriate camera. Continous enhancements of that camera and an alteration of a Linhof Technica followed in order to improve quality and allow long exposures and night photographs. As to use that camera for studio shots, too, I built diverse rotation mechanisms and a module for exact velocity control."