in context of room, building and city

>Monstrance, Camera, Film

 

...Balthaus' three-part photograph develops the idea of a space for perception from the Gothic period to the present. The three photographs show a monstrance, a golden Leica from the '20s, and the enlargement of a perforated strip of film. The size of the perforation corresponds exactly to the opening of the Leica's lens and to the round container for the host at the center of the monstrance. The idea of perforating film goes back to the German engineer Konrad Zuse who, in 1936, used to perforate film to power his first computer. In this work, Balthaus describes a spiritual process from Christianity to the computer age.

 

Peter Funken

 

Excerpt from "Artforum International" March 1993, Translated from the German by Charles V. Miller