Raised Blind (Hochsitz). 2004
Bertram Kober's series "Raised Blind" came into being between 2001 and 2005. His carefully calculated selection of the picture details and the similar lighting during the exposures allows the viewer to feel the cloudy climate in the deserted landscapes. The coolly descriptive diction makes it possible to study the "architecture" of the raised blinds, their diversity and their vibrancy that communicates strength as well as fragility. Aside from mobile constructions there are also throne-like variations with which the hunters rise above their territory in two senses of the word. There is a definite lack of coziness among the hunters' sometimes rather strange looking, home-made observation towers. Observers looking for the traces of game won't find them, they will rather find themselves in this place and: nowhere in the landscapes will they find the protective forest. The, at first, seemingly sculptural aesthetic of the raised blinds in the pictures transforms into feelings of danger and being threatened. Questions about reasonableness show up in stead of cheery sentiments of "nothing in the world is like the joy of hunting" – as is sung in the Carl Maria von Weber opera "Der Freischütz". Well known things seem strange all of the sudden. The artist thus achieves a direct emotional effect. The works not only fascinate, they unsettle and sensitize in equal measure.
Christine Dorothea Hoelzig
Hochsitz In: Bertram Kober – Fotografie. Brochure about the exhibition in
the studio gallery, Denkmalschmiede Hoefgen. 2007
The photographer showed himself to be more than an "author-photographer" of distinction with "Raised Blind". (Klaus Honnef coined the term for those photographers who select their topics and handle them in individually appropriate ways.) Above and beyond that, "Raised Blind" is a series that follows a strict concept, a method Kober used a long time ago for the portraits of right-wing teenagers. The connection of series and concept allows the arbitrariness of each individual picture to transcend – the pictures comment on and enhance each other. It commands comparisons, allows commonalities and differences between the photographed objects to become clear. Here, Kober follows the principle of the photographic inventory, that has been showing up again and again in different contexts in the history of the medium, first in science, then in social documentation, and finally in decidedly artistic contexts since the 1960's.
An association with Kober's raised blinds, that immediately comes to mind, are the serial architecture studies by Hilla and Bernd Becher, especially their collections of old pit heads. However, as opposed to the Bechers, Kober doesn't show any sequences, that is eight views around each construction taken at regular distances, neither does he present his objects in profile orthogonally, that is photographed parallel to their "right side". And he isn't interested in a typology of a certain group of buildings as the Bechers were, but instead he photographed each raised blind individually for its fitting view, i.e. portraits of objects. ... It – what Kober deals with in his photography – is always about social, political, economic, cultural, religious conditions and how they form an environment and coalesce as constructed or made things, how they speak with and from the things in the end. ... Mutatis mutandis also applies to the raised blinds that are in and of themselves anonymous pieces of architecture, pragmatic assemblages of metal, wood, found bits and industrial half-finished products. Found and selected on trips and compiled in this book, emblematically photographed objects witness to a special "natural" condition in such a reduced and pointed way. Never before has Kober "worked through" one of his topics so monomaniacally, so systematically, and with such restrained photographic means. ... Kober's general approach can be described in the sense of affirmation as critique. Kober states, takes notice of and shows, what he notices. He first reaches the critical mass of each phenomenon he is currently studying through his serial procedure and approach. Then, and this is where he shows what's typical and characteristic about it, it proves to be indicative and emblematic for social conditions. "Hunting is even fun" says the song. In Kober's pictures it looks different.
T.O. Immisch
Excerpt from: Auf auf zum froehlichen Jagen? In: Bertram Kober HOCHSITZ.
Ploettner Verlag Leipzig. 2008. Page 56