Michael Wesely

Michael Wesely - Technical regression brings about artistic development

Michael Wesely was born in Munich in 1963. As an artist, he consciously decided on the medium of photography, as it best suited his convictions, ideas and interests. Technical progress, which today allows photography to be ever faster and more precise, was more of an obstacle for the art photographer, and it was only the rediscovery of slowness that enabled Wesely to realise his artistic vision appropriately. Not only does he buck the trend of the time and rely on analogue technology, he also makes ingenious modifications to the cameras he uses in order to adapt the technology to his creative inspiration. His self-built pinhole cameras are particularly well suited to the long exposures required by the artist. Wesely's sometimes extraordinarily long development times allow him to capture extended processes of change in a single image. Whole stretches of time shrink together in the lens of Michael Wesely's camera, merging into a snapshot that in reality extends over many moments.

Location and occasion determine the type and style of photography

Michael Wesely relies on a slow pace and blurring to tell his stories - and in this way achieves insights of remarkable sharpness. With an exposure time of over 26 months, he succeeded in creating a unique documentation of the construction work on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Wesely can depict the growth and withering of plants in a single image - a challenge and an attraction for the viewer in equal measure. Patience is therefore one of Michael Wesely's most important tools. By means of a photographic exposure, which sometimes takes over a year, the artist succeeds in taking a look at very concrete processes, detached from temporal reality. When choosing his exposure time, Wesely does not feel bound to a fixed ideal, but is always guided by the location and the corresponding occasion. For a photo project about the Amazon, the artist decided on a record-breaking low exposure time of 10 minutes - still half an eternity compared to the usual values in modern photography today.

A whole day in Brazil in a single photograph

Michael Wesely is married to the Brazilian artist Lina Kim, born in 1965; the couple also work together on selected projects. Between 2003 and 2010, they created numerous photographs of the Brazilian capital Brasília, each with an exposure time from sunrise to sunset. For an exhibition project, Wesely and his wife also collected a large number of images illustrating the construction process of the city, which was only consecrated in 1960. A carefully compiled selection of around 300 prints was presented to a fascinated audience in Ulm and Kiel. Building on this work, Wesely and Kim reconstructed 1,500 originally black-and-white photos in colour and published them in an illustrated book that was released in Brazil.

Michael Wesely lives and works today primarily in his adopted home of Berlin.