"ART21 ARTIST"

Florian Maier-Aichen

- The artist i choose is named Florian Maier-Aichen he is a landscape photographer based in Cologne, Germany and Los Angeles, USA. He uses a combination of traditional photographic techniques and computer imaging.

His artwork reinterprets landscape photography, he uses obscure angle techniques which are later shot from an aerial view. He manipulates the image,and or photography in which he takes to his advantage. The photo in which he took is in red and the name of the image is called "fantasy". While envisioning this image it's almost like fantasy like because of the deep red and mountains near the water. He is not interested in pure landscape, he loves artwork that makes him feel something which is why he loves the California because of the landscape. He uses infrared film could be historical but also fictional where your in a fantasy and you cannot categorize it. He loves photography because their aren't no mistakes when taking photos, sometimes obscure angles or positions while help the actual photograph. Florian likes to break rules and boundaries and set them to his own limitation, he succeeds this by taking landscape photography of places that are emotional or attract the viewers eyes. He explores different seascapes and areas for his photography and he's taking photos of the present fence instead of the past tense.  

Born- Stuttgart, Germany

About

Florian Maier-Aichen was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied at Högskolan för Fotografi och Film, Göteborg, Sweden; the University of Essen, Germany; and earned an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Alternately romantic, cerebral, and unearthly, Florian Maier-Aichen’s digitally altered photographs are closer to the realm of drawing and fiction than documentation. He embraces difficult techniques, chooses equipment that produces accidents such as light leaks and double exposures, and uses computer enhancements to introduce imperfections and illogical elements into images that paradoxically “feel” visually right, though they are factually wrong. Often employing an elevated viewpoint (the objective but haunting “God’s-eye view” of aerial photography and satellite imaging), Maier-Aichen creates idealized, painterly landscapes that function like old postcards. Interested in places where landscape and cityscape meet, he chooses locations and subjects from the American West and Europe—from his own neighborhoods to vistas of the natural world. Looking backwards for his influences, Maier-Aichen often reenacts or pays homage to the work of the pioneer photographers of the nineteenth century, sometimes even remaking their subject matter from their original standpoints. Always experimenting, he marries digital technologies with traditional processes and films (black-and-white, color, infrared, and tricolor), restoring and reinvigorating the artistry and alchemy of early photography. Maier-Aichen’s work has appeared in recent major exhibitions at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain (2008); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007); and the Whitney Biennial (2006). Florian Maier-Aichen lives and works in Cologne, Germany, and Los Angeles.

Citation -> "http://www.art21.org/artists/florian-maier-aichen?expand=1"

                   "ARTIST AT WORK"

Florian Maier Aichen's Description- 

"For me, it was more like trying to find a way to do landscape photography and get a result that might be detached from the present—slightly historical, maybe even slightly leaning towards the future—and also kind of abstract. With infrared film it looks like it could be early color photography. It looks historical, but also almost like a little bit of science fiction or—at least—fiction."

"I like photography as a set of rules. Maybe the only way that I break them is that I take apart the photograph after it has been taken. But in terms of presentation, I still like the photograph to be framed. I like it to be matted so that people read it as a photograph and not as a painting or a drawing." 

-Florian Maier-Aichen