Lothar Osterburg
[1][2][3] He is best known for photogravures featuring rough small-scale models of rustic structures, water and air vessels, and imaginary cities, staged in evocative settings and photographed to appear life-size to disorienting, mysterious or whimsical effect.
[4][5][6] New York Times critic Grace Glueck writes that Osterburg's rich-toned, retro prints "conjur[e] up monumental phenomena by minimal means"; Judy Pfaff describes his work as thick with film noir–like atmosphere, warmth, reverie, drama and timelessness.
[30][5][17][6] He is a leading teacher and practitioner of photogravure, a 19th-century intaglio process combining printmaking and early photography techniques that was developed by Henry Fox Talbot and Karel Klíč and has remained largely unchanged and little-used.
[31][2][30][32] Photogravure's rich, velvety blacks, continuous infinite tonality, and sensitivity to textural effects—scratches, dust and traces resulting from Osterburg's choice to sometimes print with the backs of used copperplates—impart qualities of timelessness, poignancy, mystery and the hand-made to images.
[33][34][35] Osterburg mines persistent images in his (and collective) memory, which he recreates in quick, intuitively built models devoid of people, stripped of superfluous detail, and made with humble, found materials: toothpicks, twigs, vegetables, glass doorknobs, broken umbrellas, books, refuse.
[7][1] He places the unpeopled models in carefully selected, sometimes far-flung settings (beaches, lakes or rivers, cities), then photographs them through a magnifying glass or macro lens so they appear life-size from a human vantage point, drawing viewers in as lone spectators.
[33][38][43][42] Reviews describe these images as beyond documentary or appropriated photography, baffling in their mix of mute, rough-hewn forms, deceptive composing and real settings, whose effects of mist, morning dew, fog, even wind, are captured by photogravure's infinite tonality.
[35][6][38] Works such as Tidepool Lighthouse (2000) or Floating Village in Halong Bay (2005) offer seemingly historic, rugged New England and Southeast Asian coastal scenes, only to be revealed as models resting on tidal algae or shallow pools.
[34] Osterburg's flight interests culminated in images of ancient-yet-futuristic vessels and spacecraft hovering over shadowy shanty and shack cities in his show, "Strangely Familiar" (2006, Highpoint Center), and his series of planets populated by gigantically scaled boats, bridges and condominiums (e.g., Babylon, 2008), which were inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince.
[2][54][5] Boston Globe critic Mark Feeney characterized the incongruous images as "marvels of deadpan hilarity"; others write that they grapple with the vulnerability of cities to change, simultaneously suggesting alternate histories and future archaeological excavations of contemporary civilization.
