Klaus Rossler

Bio / Statement

Photographer Klaus Rossler’s career has gone through many changes in life before entering the world of photography: formal training in graphic design, cabinetry and professional furniture and antiques restoration in Germany, extensive travel in Europe and Asia, study of jazz guitar at university level, performing and recording in North America and Europe, including Los Angeles and NY/NY.

Yet, his outlook on life changed again after moving to Canada, discovering the grandeur of northern landscapes and subjects in his photography. Living in Northern Ontario and many remote canoe trips had a profound and lasting influence on his work.

He sees photography as a creative process much like painting or sculpture, rather than the recording of reality - emphasizing interpretation and expression - fascination with linear structure and texture - seeing line and shape in a highly graphic way. As a result the viewer is involved through seeing instead of looking, responding emotionally. Rather than using photography as a vehicle to convey sociopolitical messages, he points the viewer towards the challenge and recognition of pure design - where line, shape, texture IS the message. It is of importance to him to make a clear distinction between the natural design observed and the personal design created, trying to convince us to abandon the notion of reality or truth, so often associated with photography. Rossler’s scrutiny becomes the viewer’s care and makes one reflect on the pure power of the visual experience.

His B&W-Duotones of dramatic landscapes, as well as series of non-representational images found recognition throughout the region and with collectors across Canada, the US and Europe. Recent series include experimental work, involving multi exposure- off register- and selective focusing techniques, resulting in what he calls Photo-Impressionism. His latest exhibition “View From The Edge” explores juxtapositions of outgoing, expanding vistas and the close and intimate, as well as reflections, representing a visual transformation from solid to liquid matter.

Besides observation and capture, Rossler prefers to control all aspects of processing his work, including editing and darkroom techniques, printing, matting and framing in archival quality.

The influence of the land continues to play a significant role in Rossler’s work, closing the circle from an outgoing, expanding view into the grand vista, back to the micro cosmos of collages of rock and lichen, colors and textures, creating his distinctive point of view.

Photography...

originated in Greek terminology, meaning 'writing / painting with light', suggests being interpreted as an expressive and creative act. Instead of seeing photography as a tool for thoughtless snap-shots, mere documentation or as a vehicle to convey sociopolitical messages, I try to point the viewer towards the original, artistic mandate of photography - the challenge and recognition of pure design - where light, shape, texture ... is the message.

As in all visual arts, in photography it is equally essential to distinguish between the natural design we observe and the personal design we create. I see photography as a creative process much like painting or sculpture. Not only is taking pictures, or better 'Making Photo-Graphs', biased and constructed via mind and tool, so is viewing and our perception of photographs and everything around us.
Photo-Graphs are an expression of what the photographer sees and imagines. They are an individual's perception … an individual’s reality and view of the world. This applies to the photographer as well as to the viewer. As a result, one could say that the camera's lens is equally pointed towards our surroundings as inside our soul. It illuminates the observer as well as the observed.

In a painting it is often automatically assumed that the scene depicted is not as it appeared in reality, that the artist has included his own feelings, way of seeing and expression.
Alternatively, in viewing a photograph, we mistakenly tend to believe that it is the truth, that it is a factual document of something that existed in the exact form in which it was recorded. Since its invention photography has been associated with the recording of reality and has become the norm for the way things appear real to society. It's a commonly held believe that the camera gives us a picture of the world that represents what we would see without the camera, that the camera simply duplicates what the eye sees … nothing could be further from the truth!

All photography starts with seeing, followed by the challenge to transform the observed into personal expression and emotion. I think a photographer needs even more imagination than a painter. The painter can invent things, but in photography everything is so ordinary and 'real' to start with. It takes a lot of imagination to break free from reality. The painter starts with an empty canvas - the photographer starts with a full one, facing the challenge to envision and reveal the essential, to exclude clutter and to discard the inessential.

Despite all the technology hype and advantages of the digital age, the most important part of photography - and for that matter of all visual arts - is still the ‘Art of Seeing', the recognition of the elements in visual design and freeing the subject matter from its identity. It is still our imagination and creative vision, experimentation and the breaking of rules. It is still about overcoming stagnate, conservative thinking, the willingness to let go of the convenient strategies that worked for us in the past and the acceptance of making mistakes.

The challenge is not to master the functions of the camera, but to transform the observed into a personal
interpretation. Photography is not about capturing a scene, but about expressing yourself... by shaping and
altering the scene through your imagination. It’s about opening a window into a different world, a world shaped by emotions rather than by logic. Here reality has little or no relevance.
As Ansel Adams rightfully stated: “The single most important component of a camera is the 12 inches behind it”

Photography, especially in the digital age with its convenience and technical superiority, can be the easiest medium to be confident. But, on the contrary, it can be the hardest medium to have personal vision, because we are constantly reminded of - and held back - by the demon of reality.

Photography is both - realness and abstractness. Resist the urge to ask 'what is it?' - resist the label. Instead, let your eyes roam over shapes, lines, textures...and their arrangements, responding emotional, not logical.
It can be the means of discovering the world around us – with new eyes – and perhaps … discover ourselves.

I hope you enjoy viewing my images as much as I do making them.

Achievements

• Images have been published in Photo-Life Magazine, several outdoor/canoeing magazines
and tourism promotions / websites and have been used for various corporate and
commercial applications in North America and Europe.

• Other commercial work includes assignments, reproduction of artwork, as well as 10 years
of experience and clientele in photo-restoration.

• Photography of exhibitions and artwork for documentation and publication at the Thunder
Bay Art Gallery since 2006.

• His work has been chosen by the Canadian Museum Of Nature / Ottawa for being part in
‘The Water Project’, a ten year national touring exhibition.

• Collectors in Canada, the US and Europe, private and with interior designers

• Publication in Canadian Geographic’s special edition book “National Parks 2011”

• Artist in Residence at Pukaskwa National Park 2011, 2012, 2013
Work with Parks Canada on promotional projects.

• The City of Thunder Bay / Ontario presented his prints to the recipients of the Thunder Bay
Arts & Heritage Awards in 2010, 2011and 2012.

• Publication in upcoming book by the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, 2013

• Rossler is member and contributing artist with Artisans North West, Thunder Bay / Ontario.

• He is a recipient of Ontario Arts Council Project- and Exhibition Grants 2008/9 and 2014/15

• Photography Workshops with Parks Canada, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and locally.

Curator's Statement:

“View From The Edge” - The Limnology Project
Thunder Bay Art Gallery Exhibition
with works by Klaus Rossler September 25 - November 15, 2009

Limnology, by definition, is the study of physical, chemical, meteorological and biological conditions of bodies of fresh water. by that token, many artists in the region can be said to be limnologists. They observe and record responses to those same conditions. This Limnology Project presents Klaus Rossler from the North Superior region, who is so inclined.

Landscape interests have strong purchase here. As citizens of Thunder Bay, we all hold that a special consciousness is ours in the splendor of isolation. Nature exerts its thrall just steps from our front doors. In the North Superior region, our eyes seem continually drawn to fresh water and its contiguities: shore, cliff, shimmer, and sky regardless of season or time of day.

The rugged simplicity synonymous with Group of Seven was consonant with our national ethos ninety years ago, but their influence has been an inhibition of the genre on the intervening decades. In the 1960’s abstraction forced art in a different direction. Happenstance, not hostility, saw the theory-heavy approaches of the 1980’s and 1990’s evade pictorial landscape. At times, it has been difficult to find landscapes unattached to political correct images of pollution, industrial degradation, the depravity of resource pillaging, or moralistic social provocation. Even more ironically, landscape interests waned as the environmental movement blossomed. The function of landscape to lend perspective to space seemed totally eclipsed.

This week, as the G 20 leaders convene in Pittsburgh to do their No-You-First Dances and global warming continues apace, it seems even more imperative to champion a genre that supports us, individually and collectively, to contemplate the natural world around us and our relation to it. Fortunately for us, Klaus Rossler’s exhibition here represents a focused attention that cannot but bolster our private environmental considerations. Being concerned with beauty, he is committed to health.

Klaus Rossler’s photo-based reflections can all be seen to represent aspects of our own physical contexts, our own perceptions, and the necessary focus of our own ecological concerns. Viewers will find resonance in their tender observations and careful interpretations. Klaus Rossler’s “View From The Edge” may have started as an examination of Nipigon Lake, but it seems now less about the objectivity of the camera lens, and far more about his personal feelings and the emotions of the mind behind the lens. Adhering to the lineage of B&W, which is every photographers heritage, his “Longing” series is a highly evocative statement about those distant unattainable places that seem to afflict our memory. Avalon, the inaccessible Isle of the Blessed, a mirage of perfection, secluded and sublime, is separated from the viewers by turbulent waters. The chill of foreboding, the shadow of doubt, seem to hang in the air. In other images, the whisper of tall grasses and shiver of sands pulled by the ebbing waves, become almost audible. The molten, undulating shimmer of foliage gets cast down to luminous lake.

The responsibility of the artist to present us is amply fulfilled here by Klaus. Quietly, lovingly, he attends to the world around him, caring for himself and for the land on which his community abides. For me these are all images of indwelling, of Being Here Now.


On behalf of Board of Directors, Sharon Godwin, and staff of the TBAG, and on behalf of your respective communities, I thank you for your work and show.

Glenn Allison - Curator
Thunder Bay Art Gallery

Exhibitions:

2003 Intergenerational Centre – Atikokan, Ontario
2004 Pictograph Gallery, Atikokan, Ontario
2005 Gallerie Paquin, Kapuskasing, Ontario
2005 Galley 815, Hurst, Ontario
2007 Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Ontario
2007 A-frame Gallery, Sioux Lookout, Ontario
2008 Duluth Art Institute, Minnesota
2009 Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Ontario
2012 Sioux Lookout Centennial Center, Ontario

photography, fine art / giclee prints, landscape, still life, experimental