Art Metropole

#12082

Lost Stories

Artist

Peter Strehle

Date

2013

Publisher

Edition Taube

Format

Artists' Books

Genre

Photography

Peter Strehle (born 1979) tells fictional stories by assembling discarded polaroids from allover the US.

The Stuttgart based media artist indeed has a thing going for Polaroid pictures, which he randomly buys from household clearings, flea markets or ebay. He collects and hoards those lost private memories in order to find corresponding motives, odd moments or fascinating characters which he puts in context to make up new stories.

“Through fabricating story lines, Strehle succeeds in playing with visual fragments of memories. In appreciating this second-hand material, he not only reanimates it, but also recalls long forgotten situations and events. As the former owners may have lost their once visually fixed memories or do not need them anymore for reasons which are possibly as unknown as multifaceted, the viewers is left to fill them with fresh colour. As a result, the stories, which are developed in our minds depending on our individual horizon, common sense and general attitude, are apart from the given hints, completely based on our own ideas or imagination. Furthermore, the stories function both as reflections and projections according to our personal handling of the past.” — Corinna Steimel