36 black trapezoidal shapes – all of different sizes and distorted in different ways – have been arranged on a white wall. It is evident that they have been sorted out: from large to small, from inside to outside, from top to bottom. Viewed together at some distance, they fill an almost square section of the wall. (fig. p. 8)
What do we see? According to the work specifications, these are 36 classic black and white photographs: silver gelatine prints on aluminium, measuring between 5 x 5 and 15 x 15 centimetres. Just a minute! Are these supposed to be photographs? There’s nothing on them!

But that’s exactly what Laurenz Theinert wanted to photograph here: nothing. Or more precisely: the dark empty space in the frame of a small window without any panes in an old barn. A whole roll of film, 36 images with 36 views of the same motif taken from different angles. He then cut away everything that was not part of his motif – the frame, the room, in short: all the clues that might have led us to identify, locate and interpret this “nothing”. The only difference is that it would no longer have been “nothing”, but a window without panes in an old barn in the small village of Lehmden in Lower Saxony. The title Lehmden 1994/1 gives the one tiny hint that Theinert’s “nothing” is not everywhere and all of the time, but that in the best manner of documentary photography, the photographs depict something that the artist actually found in this exact form at a specific moment in a specific place.

Yet Theinert has also documented something else: that capturing a unique moment which ultimately becomes a photograph involves more than just pressing the shutter button. By presenting not one photo, but 36 photos of the same motif in the same location on the same day, albeit from different vantage points, he shows – as a central element of the photographic process – the results of the movements he himself performed at that place in order to capture the motif. An excellent example of this is the series Randerscheinungen [Peripheral Phenomena], in which the subject of the picture is not the motif at the centre but the periphery of the motif on the edge. (figs. pp. 10, 38) He achieves this by selecting objects (a letterbox, house wall, wall, sign, lamppost etc.) and photographing them as almost format-filling surfaces before covering them with a mask in a similar colour value during digital post-processing. In many instances, this monochrome colour block is further highlighted by a thick plastic slab that stands out from the picture surface and serves to obstruct the view. All that remains legible of the photo is a narrow strip of colour just a few millimetres wide along the edge, which allows us to decipher information in an elaborate interpretative process that raises more questions than it answers. Laurenz Theinert refers here to the phenomenon of peripheral vision, to the perception of areas in the visual field that are not registered at the centre of the retina (fovea). Instead of focusing on an object to get a sharp view, as in foveal vision, with peripheral vision one practically looks past the object. It takes up the largest part of our visual field (99.9%), but only 50% of the power of the optic nerve and visual cortex. The other 50% is taken up by foveal vision. Peripheral vision is important for the perception of movement and for seeing in twilight or the dark – in other words, whenever we are unable to distinguish something properly with our eyes. Without peripheral vision, we would be at a loss in everyday life. It shows us structures and connections even before we are able to recognise them consciously and with clarity. It allows us to act instinctively, such as by taking evasive action when something comes at us at speed. It helps with intuitive orientation. It makes us seem clairvoyant at times when it is impossible to see “correctly”. For Laurenz Theinert, peripheral vision also has a philosophical dimension: “I see the task of art as observing peripheral phenomena in order to surmise what might happen in the future. My feeling is that we are travelling through life in reverse. We know the past, so we look backwards. When we think we have an idea of what the future holds, we generally project ideas forwards from the past. You can only really explore what might come if you are aware of these projections.”

“Good photography is an art of movement. It’s about the right viewpoint, the search for it: the rest is technique,” as Laurenz Theinert says about the artistic medium he has explored for over forty years.1 Even in his twenties, his photographic output assumed increasingly abstract and conceptual forms, until he arrived at the point where the route to the image interested him more than the finished photograph: “Instead of taking photographs, I wanted to describe the routes I took and leave it to others to find and capture the image.”

Theinert’s decision to show not just a single shot of the motif, but an entire field of images from 36 different angles, reveals his doubts about the validity of the subjectively chosen detail. Is there even such a thing as the “right” viewpoint? How much reality does it have, how likely is it to provide insight? “I believe that you can discern a larger context if you are able to adopt several viewpoints at a time.”

Once again the question: What do we see? Is it 36 individual parts hung in a grid, or isn’t it the case that our mind creates a new, completely different “picture” from the distribution, size and shape of the elements? Even with a 3D effect! The distribution and weighting of the details is chosen in just such a way that our gaze cannot remain completely fixed. Instead, it swings back and forth between paying attention to the individual element and viewing the whole: in addition to what is actually visible, the processes that occur between seeing and interpreting are brought to awareness and made the object of observation.

By scrutinising and reflecting on the photographic process, Theinert already arrived at questions about the processes and conditions of perception and cognition in the 1990s. The attempt to capture an image of “nothing”, which cannot actually be photographed, marked the starting point for what became a key principle in his work. It is the at first seemingly absurd challenge of directing the gaze – in a work that is to be experienced visually – to precisely that which eludes visibility.

An excellent example of this is the series Randerscheinungen [Peripheral Phenomena], in which the subject of the picture is not the motif at the centre but the periphery of the motif on the edge. (figs. pp. 10, 38) He achieves this by selecting objects (a letterbox, house wall, wall, sign, lamppost etc.) and photographing them as almost format-filling surfaces before covering them with a mask in a similar colour value during digital post-processing. In many instances, this monochrome colour block is further highlighted by a thick plastic slab that stands out from the picture surface and serves to obstruct the view. All that remains legible of the photo is a narrow strip of colour just a few millimetres wide along the edge, which allows us to decipher information in an elaborate interpretative process that raises more questions than it answers.

Laurenz Theinert refers here to the phenomenon of peripheral vision, to the perception of areas in the visual field that are not registered at the centre of the retina (fovea). Instead of focusing on an object to get a sharp view, as in foveal vision, with peripheral vision one practically looks past the object. It takes up the largest part of our visual field (99.9%), but only 50% of the power of the optic nerve and visual cortex. The other 50% is taken up by foveal vision. Peripheral vision is important for the perception of movement and for seeing in twilight or the dark – in other words, whenever we are unable to distinguish something properly with our eyes. Without peripheral vision, we would be at a loss in everyday life. It shows us structures and connections even before we are able to recognise them consciously and with clarity. It allows us to act instinctively, such as by taking evasive action when something comes at us at speed. It helps with intuitive orientation. It makes us seem clairvoyant at times when it is impossible to see “correctly”.

For Laurenz Theinert, peripheral vision also has a philosophical dimension: “I see the task of art as observing peri pheral phenomena in order to surmise what might happen in the future. My feeling is that we are travelling through life in reverse. We know the past, so we look backwards. When we think we have an idea of what the future holds, we generally project ideas forwards from the past. You can only really explore what might come if you are aware of these projections.”

In further experimental investigations, Theinert hasstudied the impact and the potential exerted by camera technologyand digital image processing on non-subjective approachesto photography. One example is his Tagundnachtgleiche [Equinox] (1999), in which he repeatedly photographed identical, adjacent sections of sky and wall at 5 minute intervals. (figs. pp. 16/17) He set the camera’s exposure settings to automatic, which produced a quite riveting series of colour surfaces in varying hues, degrees of brightness and contrast of something to which, once we have taken it in, we usually only assign one colour, and see as such in our minds. We “know” the wall is white, so we store that as a visual impression. We do this even when the actual impression is different, such as when a wall painted white takes on a different colour as a result of shadows, light or reflections. Anyone who paints is all too familiar with the problem: it takes a lot of training to ignore these “known” colours in order to create something on a picture surface that conveys a similar visual impression to what it aims at depicting. The comparison between our perceptions that have been “coloured” by mental processes and what the automated camera “sees” is always astonishing. And puzzling: which sees what really is, the eye or the lens?

Another colour and light experiment began on a gloomy day in Lucerne in 2013, which Theinert spent wandering around the city in a dismal mood. He caught his depressed state of mind, brought on by a mixture of loneliness and lack of distractions, in a series of photographs of grey surfaces and objects, which he later playfully transmuted in his hotel room using an image editing programme. (cf. pp. 2, 12) He blurred his images until the objects were all quite unrecognisable, with only colour values left: rainy grey, foggy grey, asphalt grey, shady grey, window grey, grey sky grey, cloud grey, concrete grey. But now without the rain, fog, tarmac, shadow, window, sky, cloud, or concrete. Quite gruesome, as it were. The turning point came when he chanced on the colour saturation slider, which suddenly conjured up cheerful psychedelic shapes and colours from even the greyest of greys. Surprised and fascinated, Theinert turned the discovery into a strategy which has since prompted him to repeatedly sound out not only the bleak sides of big cities, but also his own moods for “colour residues”.

The question of how light creates images and influences our organs of perception already led the artist many years ago to extend his work into space. “The deeper my understanding [of the visual] became, the more I wanted to share this experience – the process of appearance and disappearance, or the occurrence – with others,” as Laurenz Theinert describes his motivation.2 One telling factor distinguishes his spatial installations from his photography: here, both sides – art producer and recipient – have active roles (unlike photography, where one is only able to draw conclusions afterwards, on studying the photographs). In the spatial installations, the participants are all equally researchers. Producers and recipients may act at different times, but they act directly and right there in the space, making discoveries with light, space and themselves.

One example of such an artistic experimental arrangement is the installation Gespinst [Weave], which Theinert has realised at various locations since 2008. (figs. pp. 14, 15, 27) For this, he stretches electroluminescent cables back and forth diagonally across the venue – up and down, side to side, to create a kind of three-dimensional line drawing. Sections of the cables light up alternately with a brilliant white light. The pulses along the various cables each follow their own slow, regular rhythms. Imprecisions in the control mechanisms result in different speeds in each cable. Our visual perception has to process two different phenomena in this piece: on the one hand, the spatial relationships between cables and building, which create ambiguous perspectives: What is in front? What is behind? On the other hand, the temporal relationships between the rhythmically appearing lines of light. It is not easy to concentrate on a single line as it switches on and off, to see it quasi as an “individual”. We are far more inclined to focus our attention on the overall interplay of the different flashing lines. We try to make out the “system” behind the play of light, but success is denied us because there is no system. Whenever we think we have identified a pattern, the blinking deviates from what we thought we knew would happen. Instead, the focusing, repetition and slowing down of our perceptual processes reveals the brain’s proclivities when detecting shapes and patterns. These even go so far as to produce patterns and shapes of their own. We switch from looking at the installation to looking at ourselves. We feel a deep desire to find a pattern – and how hard it is for us to accept the non-patterns for what they are.

So what do we actually see? What does the image we make up say about reality? Laurenz Theinert does not answer these questions. But in his works he slows down the complex process of seeing, which normally takes place unconsciously at breakneck speed, until it is seemingly in slow motion, and directs our attention to individual aspects of what is occurring. He enables us to observe what happens along the path from a visual impression, a light impulse from outside, via the physical organs of vision and the contributions made by thought, feeling, and the connections and interpretations performed by the brain, before something arises in us that we call perception or cognition. It can be a fascinating experience to observe the processes and automatic reactions, the conditions and eventualities that make up perception. But you can also suddenly feel pretty blind when confronted with the limitations of your own ability to recognise. Laurenz Theinert has no solution to this dilemma. But with his works, he at least offers a training ground in which one can reflect on the paths and boundaries of perception and perhaps develop new perspectives on what can be seen.

Dr Julia Otto has worked since 2005 as curator of the Kunstmuseum Celle mit Sammlung Robert Simon. Her principle areas of work and research include light art and space-orientated art, in particular the interaction and interplay between artwork, place, moment and person