Markus Hartel — Street Photography

Street photography, one might say is, unconventional, mainly because it’s just plainly photography of ones surroundings. One might also say no such art can be made from such a vague frame of meaningless day-to-day proceedings because it seizes to emphasize “purpose”. To Markus Hartel however, this aesthetic is gained purely because of its lack of purpose and more so on its illuminating factor of truth.

Admitting that it was easy for me to find nice art photography would be me being honest. Admitting that it was easy for me to be captivated by all the other art photographers relative to Markus Hartel would be a lie. Hartel, in each and every picture he takes shares no purpose but rather ignites a truth behind the simple ways of life. He captures life at its most desperate time, a time where one notices absolutely nothing, when one is supposed to notice absolutely nothing. Because there is no purpose in noticing something that to us doesn’t need to be noticed. But what if you did notice? what purpose would there be to noticing? None. Markus Hartel seems to want to notice without purpose; to expose what is hidden behind this purpose we seek in order to notice. A truth.

Hartel captures the truth within a meaningless frame by reflecting every day life. The unaltered presentations of public normality, the subway, a dirty road, a favorite store, busy traffic. Markus Hartel lives to tell the truth behind these unnoticed moments. The fraction of a second that he captures is frozen forever in his art, a moment taken that one will instantly be forgotten in that same amount of time.

Another amusing factor to Markus Hartel’s work is the contrast and sense of Irony. Hartel depicts a nice exploration of light and shadow within his work and he uses black and white representation to emphasize it. But if you look closely, in almost all of Hartel’s photography there is a smidgen of irony in his subject. And because of this his photography illuminates the celebration behind humanity’s beautiful flaws.

~In admiration to Markus Hartel’s work~