Desire

Where does reality end and fantasy begin? Ernst Hartig in his photographs and Magda Vapor in her narrative explore this question in verydifferent ways. Although clearly staged, Ernst Hartig’s nude studies emanate a natural sensuality. It is the artistic sensitivity on the one hand and the high level of technical skill of the photographer Ernst Hartig on the other which together lend each motif its special charm and its own dramaturgy. The viewer becomes an unnoticed spectator of a theatre piece, which develops an almost magical attraction with its skill and openness. And just as each individual photograph has its own story to tell, the male protagonist in the story told by Magda Vapor encounters the erotic identities of very different women, identities which, through his own history, become interwoven into one context. Imprisoned by the day-to-dayritual, he has lost the capability to feel and remember. But one day the eternal sameness is disrupted: A female co-worker, derisively referred to in private by her colleagues as The Toad, writes him an email with the subject “come in”. Before he knows it, he is in a virtual bar, where The Toad is the “mother of all femaleness”. Repulsed and fascinated at the same time, he discovers the next day that he can remember again. “desire” is a book to discover and enjoy: It invites you to take your time and become involved in a dialogue with the pictures and the story. Both art forms comply with each other, the one beside the other, enjoy equal rights however mutually inspire one another. They find perfection as a holistic art work quite naturally in the mind of the observer of the story and the reader of the photographs. From the interaction of all protagonists emerges a new whole.