RESIDUAL LIGHT
A HYBRID OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND LIGHT ART

Klaus Honnef

Photographs used to be considered where images were assigned a defining characteristic. But the photographed, analog images in reality are silhouetted. Nevertheless, the light initiates the photographic process. It sets off the automatism, which distinguishes it from every other technical method of image creation.

Residual light is the trace of light remaining at the end of the day, just before nightfall. It creates a special, often poetically atmospheric mood. It requires patience and determination to put it to photographic use. Residual Light is the title of Bernd Nicolaisen’s project, which distinguishes it from conventional photography.

Light is not only the cause of what becomes visible in Nicolaisen’s pictures, it is also the subject matter itself; sometimes resembling the photograms, made without a camera, which initiated the history of photography. His works remind us of the light paintings of Heinz Hajek-Halke, through to the work of Chargesheimer and Heinz Mack. What becomes visible, apart from the light, in Nicolaisen’s pictures can appear to be just as abstract as the works of the artists mentioned previously. It is, however, the reflection of a precise, perceptible, and completely tangible reality.

When considering the meaning of Nicolaisen’s images, common categories of attribution fail. This is what makes it easier to express what his pictures are not, rather than what they are. They bear an astounding resemblance to photograms, but only to the kind that develop thanks to natural light. They are recordings, made from the distinctive point of view of their author, utilizing the specific capabilities of the bellows camera. So light is not their only creative factor. They distinguish themselves from light paintings as they are produced without the use of artificial light sources.

It is also significant that, although light is the object of the images, it produces a picture of something else, and does not exclusively portray itself. One may grant Nicolaisen’s pictorial objects a general kinship to the illuminated art of Adolf Luther, James Turrell, and the like; who, as they reveal their art in a space, will simultaneously make the space itself appear.

The images originate from ancient glacial ice found in the caves of Iceland, formed during a time span of tens of thousands of years. The light, penetrating layers of ice in which traces of lava have been embedded over time, is residual light that has been progressively filtered, refracted, and reflected. It sparsely illuminates the cave. Traces of lava emerge as structural elements. Time is condensed into the image as if it were a quality of the ice itself.

Nicolaisen presents the finished pictures in light boxes, similar to those of Jeff Wall but in significantly larger, almost superhuman formats. Additionally, he displays them in a cave like ambience; for example at his exhibition in the crypt of Zurich cathedral. This provokes a shivering sensation of physical participation in the observer. This specifically selected form of presentation evokes associations with the symbolic meaning of light in almost all cultures, as a metaphor for truth and the divine. In his Residual Light project, Nicolaisen provides a new twist to Plato’s famous cave allegory, with an alternative ending. Even shadow worlds can be infiltrated by light you only need to look for it. Residual Light manifests a hybrid of documentary photography and the art of light manipulation, in a uniquely modern sense.