WORK

Behind Closed Doors - zwischen Menschen und Maschinen

Wolfram Schroll's photographs take us into unknown spaces between people and machines.

The industrial photographer works for clients from Germany and Europe and takes photographs, for example, for company self-portraits, company presentations, internet and trade fair appearances. Wolfram Schroll's passionate interest in technology is also the starting point for his artistic photographs. He focuses on the processes between people and machines. The relationship between people and machines, their significance, their changes, their demarcations and adaptations in relation to the machines are among Schroll's central motifs, with people sometimes taking center stage as they control and steer the machines with their activities, but sometimes people also appear small and insignificant among the complex technical constructions.

Wolfram Schroll's photographs, compiled under the title “WORK”, take us into rooms and areas that are normally inaccessible. Behind closed doors, Wolfram Schroll first shows us the classic relationship between man and machine, as it was shaped by industrialization in the 19th century and still exists in many branches of industry: man operates the machines, he controls, guides, directs, as for example in the work “Foundry”. The fact that the human being appears rather small and lost in relation to the size of the industrial plant in this picture points to developments that are of fundamental importance for the relationship between man and machine today and that accompany current questions about artificial intelligence: Can artificial intelligence be permanently controlled? Have humans and machines already become so similar that they are becoming more and more alike? Wolfram Schroll's works refer to these questions; they deliberately refuse to provide answers, leaving them to the viewer.

Stylistically, Wolfram Schroll opts for black and white photography, which draws the eye to structures and patterns, so that in the work “Medical Technology 1”, for example, the impression is created that man and machine dissolve into a single cosmos. Another of his stylistic devices is motion blur, for example in the picture “Medizintechnik 2”, which makes the moving interlocking of man and machine in the work process visible.

Some pictures let us look into faces, e.g. in “Test unit of an exhaust system”, where posture, expression and equipment merge with the robot to form a kind of human-machine.

Against the background of the history of industrial photography, Wolfram Schroll finds his own visual language. His works are neither clearly socially or technically critical photographs, as we know them from early industrial photography, nor are they aestheticized depictions of complex manufacturing processes. Wolfram Schroll's photographs lie somewhere in between, they open doors that have been closed a crack and allow us an insight into modern industrial transformation processes.

Please note that these photographs are not for sale, but are only intended for exhibitions and publications.

© Klaus Pfeiffer, März 2024