Manfred Paul: Still Life Photographs 1983-1985

This series of still-life photographs by Manfred Paul were produced while the GDR still existed. As photographs they go beyond the general symbolicism of still lifes; time seems doubly frozen, as if the fish, leaves and branches at the bottom of the lake have been frozen into a still-life photograph, as if petrified in clear ice before the first snowfall. Things are abandoned, with apparent carelessness―a bunch of tulips in a glass vase wilts in infinite beauty, their black and white sharpness emits an almost painful appeal against the transience and replaceability of the blooms. In their irredeemable alienation they inevitably become a devotional mental image of human existence. Manfred Paul was born in 1942 in Schraplau (former German Democratic Republic). After graduating from high school he worked as a photolab technician before studying photography and camerawork in Leipzig and Potsdam- Babelsberg. From 1983 to 1985 he made his first works using an 18 x 24 cm plate camera. The nature morte series was produced. He lectured in photography from 1974 to 1994 at the FWG Berlin and was subsequently appointed Professor of Photography and Audiovisual Media at the FHTW Berlin (1995–2007). He lives in Berlin.