Nikolaus von Wolff: "Poems"

Promptography on Hahnemühle Fine Art Paper

READERS series from 2023

Size: 50 x 50 cm

Edition: 3 + 1 AP

Signed, titled and edition numbered by the artist in pencil on the verso.

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A young man reads Jack Kerouac's poems in the middle of a crowded train car. His expression is serious, almost detached, while the other passengers look at him curiously. Von Wolff condenses the contrast between inner contemplation and external observation: reading as a form of self-assertion amidst the norm, Kerouac as a symbol of a generation that wanted to break boundaries. The scene seems like a snapshot of the Beat era – raw, authentic, full of intensity. But it is precisely in the perfection of the image that the paradox becomes apparent: the lighting is too flawless, the composition too closed, the expression too precise. The AI ​​writes along by eliminating the blurriness of the documentary, thus creating a new, unsettling form of authenticity. The work confronts us with the question of whether truth today is still a question of the event – or has long since become a question of belief in the image.

This tension unfolds consistently within the Readers series. Through the aesthetics of black-and-white photography, von Wolff evokes memories of the documentary culture of the 1980s and, at the same time, of a collective visual memory of urban reading. Yet, in truth, these scenes are constructions that never occurred. AI serves not only as a means, but as the subject itself: It produces an archive that says more about our longing for memory than about the past it claims to document. Reading functions as a metaphor for concentration, for the search for meaning amidst noise and speed. Readers shows us that images don't simply depict reality, but create realities—just as books don't just tell stories, but open up worlds. It is this double refraction that makes the series a contemporary commentary on truth, fiction, and cultural identity.