christof leistl – a storyteller

christof leistl, born in freising/bavaria in 1963, is a storyteller. looking at his sequences of pictures is like intensly watching a black-and-white film that leaves the spectator in the dark – between reality and fiction – with great suspense. leistl is not interested in action as such – but still the fragments of perception cut out of the flow of events form a complete picture, a story – such as in the portrait of towns, e. g. brussels or belfast. it is not the spectacular but the meaningfulness of the unimportant, the peripheral that attracts his attention.

so, one feels reminded of the great figures of street photography, of the sauntering photographers from brassai, robert frank, robert doisneau to the seemingly casual pictures taken by lee friedlander or garry winogrand and their urban melancholy.
but christof leistl belongs to a young generation of photographers who have freed themselves from those dominant figures. his work shows a totally different intensity and quality of emotions without regard for objectively detached documentarism. their view is proof of both formal awareness and a manipulating approach, which culminates in mysteriously coding the banal: precisely the good way of telling a story. reality is understood as an endless chain of events which mirror each other and reveal, in the accumulation of pictures, the stories behind them.

leistl has developed his specific hallmark against the background of the latest tendencies in the world of film, music and design. what counts is movement, the subective impressions, the atmospheric structure. he goes along with his theme relying on its rhythm and momentum. now and then the distance to the photographic object becomes so close, the camera moves in on the situation so closely that one is almost forced to see it within the picture. a coarse grain blurring, distortion of focus, unsharpness characterize his photos – for instance of an ancient distillery, (where brandy is destilled from the roots of gentian), of a forge, of a loveparade – which fortunately refocus upon the detail again and again to rest there, for leistl never loses sight of his objective. it is true he let himself be enraptured by a theme and the viewer cannot escape from being sucked into the vortex of this suggestive world of pictures, a world that calls itself – not accidentially – »author photography«.

christof leistl has not committed himself to a particular theme. he rather tries to fathom the most various phenomena – cultural, political, historical – of our time an then he publishes his insights in quasi-documentary books. the graphic concept, the picture story, the text montage are designed by leistl himself and, in this new version of the classic photo book, they blend into a visual experience.

florian hufnagl
director
die neue sammlung
state-museum for applied arts, munich