Walter Schels:Walter Schels Vita→ Vita
Nature Morte

November 14, 2012 to January 30, 2013
The exhibition will be extended until February 28, 2013

Our gallery will be closed (December 22, 2012) during christmas season.
We will be back for you again on January 2rd 2013.

From November 14th, 2012 to January 31st, 2013 Galerie Hilaneh von Kories will present floral still lives by Walter Schels. In this series the Hamburg-based artist dedicates his visual language to the subject of flowers. Symbolizing beauty and transience, splendor and decadence, love and death – hardly a motive has been used more often than blossoming plants. But Walter Schels succeeds in extracting unique angles from a well-exploited topic. For many years, Schels collected and dried plants, blossoms and bouquets. Profoundly interested in each one of them, over time he produced touching images that still express the vitality and magnificence, but also give the idea of fading beauty. Schels likes to show life in all its facets, in which the beginning and the end surface again and again. The juxtaposition of newly born and very old people, and his series of portraits of animals and politicians, among others, has been critically acclaimed. In his series “Life Before Death”, for instance, he approaches people about to pass on from this world with enormous respect and sensibility.

Walter Schels o.T. # 01, 2010 Fiber based Fine Art Print 60 x 50 cm

With his latest works Walter Schels does no stray far from his subject – developing his own view on images of Memento Mori. A formerly proud summer flower freezes as an abstract shape, the dying petals of a tulip caught in their last dance – the photographer perfects nature’s forms as they dazzle with aesthetic, even though they are falling apart. Transience is made visible, and provokes symbolic images, which catch the volatility of physical appearance in unique pictures.

Walter Schels: o.T. # 31, 2010 Welke Tulpen Fiber based Fine Art Print 40 × 30 cmo.T. # 31

Walter Schels: o.T. # 32, 2010 Tulpen Fiber based Fine Art Print 40 × 30 cmo.T. # 32

Walter Schels: o.T. # 34, 2010 Fiber based Fine Art Print 40 × 30 cmo.T. # 34

Walter Schels was born in Landshut, Germany, in 1936. He started out as a window dresser and then moved to New York to become a photographer. In 1970, he returned to Germany and worked for illustrated and fashion magazines as well as advertising. His character studies of artists, politicians and celebrities from the cultural world brought critical acclaim. With the same intensity he took portraits of animals. Starting in 1975, Schels started to document births for the magazine “Eltern”, and became increasingly fascinated by extreme situations of the human existence. For his series about hospice patients shortly before and right after death, Schels received the “Hansel-Mieth-Award” for documentary news photography, a gold medal from the Art Director’s Club Germany, a “Lead Award” and a “World Press Photo” Award. Since 1990, Walter Schels lives and works in Hamburg. He is a member of the Freie Akademie der Künste, and an honorary member of BFF (Bund Freischaffender Fotodesigner).

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