Does a photograph really depict objective reality? Incorruptibly so? If you affirm this - why, in so many cases, are people disappointed about their photographs, because - as they say - they "did not get what they saw"? But what did they really see when taking the picture, and what did the camera see for them? And why did the camera not record their portrait of reality? 

One of a couple of answers is that a camera is a technical device, an "apparatus" without feelings and reflections - very much in contrary to the person operating it, the photographer. But even the camera changes, manipulates (in the neutral sense of the word), alienates the objects of the real world - by the setting of the diaphragm (depth of focus), of exposure time, by the choice of the lens (focal length), by using (colour and other) filters - to mention only a few facets. This is why there are three - as a rule: competing - realities: the photographer's, the camera's, and last-not-least the reality's reality, the "true" (whatever that is) world.

Computers have given us the present of another mode of manipulation: digital imaging up to (artistic?) "virtualisation". PC-programs like Photoshop, Photo-Paint, PaintShop Pro, PhotoImpact, and many others - some of them very specialised like the Virtual Painter plug-in, which converts photographs into paintings of different painting styles - offer a bandwidth of tools and filters for subsequent picture processing which photographers had always dreamed of. Gone are the good old days of smelly darkrooms with their somehow limited possibilities of "improving", "manipulating", and "alienating" pictures.

In "Everything can be Virtual" I would like to show you some of my own results of using software for digital imaging, especially for virtualisation: i. e. creating a virtual image of reality on the basis of photographic reality. Nothing very spectacular as you will see. My aim is to encourage you to make your own experiments with virtual and other realities, perhaps with better (and more spectacular), maybe artistic results. Believe me: whatever you try - it will be a lot of fun. You will be surprised... 

The first series of pictures show an "identical" reality in so far as all virtualised pictures are based on one and the same photograph of an early morning at Sjöbodskogen on the Åland Islands taken by a simple digital camera. The original, which will show up when you move the mouse cursor over one of the virtualised pictures, was slightly "tuned" by Photoimpact. The five digital images are the result of manipulating the original by changing or substituting colours, adjusting colour saturation etc, and finally virtualising them by applying filters, which simulate different painting styles as artists use them, e. g. water-colour, gouache, oil, collage, and others.

Later in this exhibition, I shall neither comment any picture nor shall I unveil its photographic origin. The pictures have abandonned their parents. This is as it should be and as I want it to be. I leave you on your own with them.

Photo: Gerd Gerbig

 Water-colour

Paul, the Tom-cat

Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Luck of Draw...

Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Gouache

Ligularia

Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Pastel

Hallstatt

Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Hibiscus syriacus

Photos: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Collage

      Photo: Matthias Teichmann

       Coloured drawing/Colour composition

  Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Magic Allée

Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Pastel

Photos: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Photos: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Poppies

Photo: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Collage

Photos: Hans-Dieter Teichmann

Impressum/Editor's Note