Caves Text

„Caves“

from blog: „Mrs. Dean“

Albrecht Tübke is a well known classic portrait photographer, framing the persons from head to toe in full size in the center of the image, while the background is often a incon­spic­u­ous part of the nearby surrounding. One exception is his famous series heads, where he portrayed swimming people under a blue sky. In his new series Caves he also includes objects and images of the landscape. In this sense, his newest series has a link with one of his earlier series he took in Dallendorf. There he complemented the portraits with a series of interior details and landscapes to give an idea of the living conditions of the portrayed persons, which makes in its totality a sympathetic combination.
Caves is made in the Italian marble quarries of Car­rara. Somehow the freshly cut marble of the gigantic quarries seems to be an ideal open air studio for Tübke. Almost every piece of worn gear trans­forms (on film) into a strange looking art object inside this natural white cubical space. The daily routine of marble cutting goes along with heavy duty noisy gears, a lot of water to keep the saws running and logistic operations to transport and preprocess the pieces of rock. By leaving out (omitting) the activities in the quarries, Tübke creates an almost surreal document, where persons and gear are left behind in isolation in a marble world.