Markus Brunetti: Facades

On show at MAKK in Cologne, the large photographs of Markus Brunetti are shot from an uncompromising frontal perspective to enhance the grandeur of the objects and show the way the artist interprets, configures, and works on them.

Any observer standing in front of Markus Brunetti’s large photographs immediately senses the quiet grandeur of the pictures – a grandeur defined first of all by the objects themselves, and secondly by the way the artist interprets, configures, and works on them.

More than nine years ago Brunetti began pursuing his passion and set out on a long journey through Europe that is still going on today, capturing the continent’s most famous cathedrals, churches, and cloisters in his photographs.

He uses a technique he developed especially for this project, in order to explore the limits of digital photography, vision, and image reproduction.

Markus Brunetti, Paróquia de Santa Marinha de Cortegaça, © Markus Brunetti 2014

He not only visits the renowned sacred buildings, such as the large Gothic cathedrals (Cologne, Strassbourg, Reims, etc.), but he also discovers gems such as the village church in Cortegaça, Portugal, shown here with its Azulejos, which he photographed with the same devotion and attention he gives to its more famous “big” sisters.

Brunetti is an enthusiastic “picture maker,” an “inventor of images” who captures and interprets the buildings he photographs in the same way that their builders and architects must have originally imagined them when they first laid out their designs on paper.

Markus Brunetti, Notre Dame de Reims © Markus Brunetti 2014

Shot from an uncompromising frontal perspective, the solitary objects seem to float, detached from time and their surroundings, bathed in a soft, almost surrealistic light. Viewers can immerse themselves completely in the experience of observing the whole facade, free from the constrictions of the normal low-angle perspective, and without the distractions and diversions stemming from the noise of everyday urban life. One is nearly tempted to try to touch the suddenly visible details in all of their apparent three-dimensionality.

“Facades” is an attempt to create a visual encyclopedia of the many different histories of sacred European architecture through the means of twenty-first-century photography.

Markus Brunetti, Cattedrale di Ferrara © Markus Brunetti 2014

from 20 August to 14 December 2014
Markus Brunetti
Facades. Cathedrals, Churches, Cloisters in Europe
MAKK
An der Rechtschule, Köln

Markus Brunetti, Köln Cathedral — Markus Brunetti, Hohe Domkirche zu Köln © Markus Brunetti 2014

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