Ursula Kaufmann

For a long time, stage photography was considered an inferior shoot in the big garden of photographic genres. The pictures taken had to be well focused in order to recognize the actors, they had to be restricted to black and white to be suitable for the newspapers, and, if at all possible, they should reflect the atmosphere of the production. Nothing more was needed. In the meantime ambitious stage photographers have helped make blurred images and color acceptable in theater business. Ursula Kaufmann, born in 1946, has supported this trend during the past two decades, but still is not satisfied. Not only does she cross the traditional lines lines of stage photography, in her “dance landscapes” after Pina Bausch’s choreography Kaufmann has gone to the limits has gone to the limits of the medium itself. Her photographs radiate overwhelming energy and dynamism, they play with the fine line between pure expressivity and eroticism, between life-style and excess. Flushes of color until near dissolution, manneristic cat walk stylings and sensual portraits take turns, thus almost letting us forget that these are all staged theater productions. Nonetheless, through all the excessive esthetics, these photographs also speak of the stage: they reflect the art of acting in their interplay of calmness and movement, speech and silence.