OLDSCHOOL & NEWSCHOOL!
- Date published
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7/abr/2007
Two periods of time will be comprised: 1989 and 2002 up to the present. Barbara Wüllenweber analyzed the phenomenon of a skater: Appearance, Clothing, Athletics, Soundscape and especially the acrobatic movement of the skater has been plotted with her camera among other things in the moment of dropin and return. She encounters a skater in the specific environment of the halfpipe in a skatepark with a photographic study of airiness and movement.
The pictures originated primary as a thematic monthly homework for the rare today almost disappearing craft-education of a photographer. Quickly the subject turned into a deeper fascination containing an intermixture of “twen admiration” of Outlaw-style and enthusiasm for skatetricks. Essential for the transposition from a female point of view of the muscular skater bodies, in their individual 80ies fashion often with kneepads, was a scientific flash-technique. Within those technical structure she tried to capture the moment of weightlessness. The photographs came into being 1989 in the Jugendpark, the Northbrigade, a miniramp at Lohsestraße, all in Cologne, the Wesselwarehouse-skatepark in Bonn and in a concrete skatepark in Liége/ Belgium. In the photography of the presence, shot on the variable types of film-sizes like 35-mm, medium- and large-format Alexander Basile engages himself with the multifaceted urban perception of the skateboarder. How is a city that seems to be more and more adjusted into a controllable economic structure used by a space-experienced pirate? How does he constitute his knowledge on his inner maps and sketches of the architecture, that he urges to roll down constantly in interminable tricks?
Gallery #7767
Alexander Basile concentrates on the interaction with urbanity and the physical contact with brick, concrete, glass, metal and wood. These architectural elements of a modern city that only a skater can live like this, as he constantly searches to experience urban static with his body and his equilibrium, are more consciously perceived than by a passer-by. The photographer also deals with the politics of banishment of the skater in controllable park-areas in outer uncommercial areas. He researches these objective facts in Europe, U.S.A and Mongolia of 2002-2007. Ironically the best “innercityexpert” of his environment will finally always be banned of his area.
The book includes also a poem by New York Skateboarder theSweetD and an Essay by Dirk Scheuring. It is monography of 500 copies including two digital prints is available in good bookstores or at 25books.
Alexander Basile and Barbara Wüllenweber
