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Born in 1958 in Saarbrücken (Germany).
Lives and works in Munich.
Gallery : www.sollertis.com
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The series « Nuns and Monks », chosen for BIP2012, is the one that made Roland Fischer famous at an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris: large format portraits, close-ups of faces highlighted by hoods of habits and veils so that it seems as if the wearer appears twice within the frame. Since then, Fischer has exhibited his work in numerous personal exhibitions around the world and his images can be found in several prestigious private and public collections.
Created for a precise canvas - always the same one - Roland Fischer’s images enable a disturbing confrontation with the model who acquires an identity that is both universal and extremely unique. It is as if we were to find ourselves before Man, and at the same time before this man or this woman, before all that a face can tell, hide or suggest about its wearer. The fact that the theme of this series focuses on believers almost intensifies this fascinating paradox, this mysterious co-presence that leads us to face both timeless humanity and all these different individuals who have dedicated their lives to God. An intense mystical presence and a powerful sense of brotherhood transcending from the simple characteristics of each person photographed emerges from these portraits.
This depth owes much to the neutralization of context and this right to the very back of the image, which appears plain and simple. Similarly, the titles do not in any way inform the beholder about the model. Fischer used this form in a later series of portraits with several variations, notably in his "Los Angeles Portraits" (1991) where he asked women of high society to pose in water of a homogeneous blue which cuts them at their shoulders and leaves the neck and face on view, once again photographed in close-up.
As the artist himself explains, he is primarily interested in the "contrast between the almost mathematical surface of photography and the natural shape of the human face". This approach has enabled him to go beyond the portrait technique towards a position that tends on the one hand to clarify the use of photography and on the other, to mobilise another resonance of portrait photography by focussing less on the identity of the model and more on existential questions.
These concerns, which are ultimately highly conceptual, continue in Fischer’s more recent series, dedicated to architecture and particularly to facades and textures leaning towards abstraction, as well as cathedrals.
AFL
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