Photographic Prevarications
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Prize
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PhotographerRichard Koenig, United States
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Date of Photographonline
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Website
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Instagram
Photographic Prevarications
For the last eight years, I have been working with pictures that I re-photograph in one way or another, suggesting a tautology or a form of meta-photography. I use this duplicative tactic as a way of exploring the inherent tension that exists within photography?its ability to both depict and deceive, simultaneously.
In my latest work, which I call Photographic Prevarications, space, planes, and objects themselves are presented in such a way as to underscore photography?s ability to tell untruths. In this way, I coax the viewer to question the nature of photography itself?by making them aware that they are looking at, and perceiving, a photograph, not looking at the subject matter of the photograph.
By using these tactics, emphasizing the tension that exists within photography, playing up its ability to dissemble, I have moved its emphasis from transparency to trickery. This in turn posits the viewer at a point where depiction and deception meet?and hopefully leaves them teetering between the two.
Richard Koenig
Born in 1960, Richard Koenig received his BFA from Pratt Institute. In 1998 he received his MFA from Indiana University and began teaching art and photography courses at Kalamazoo College, Michigan.
His fine art work, Photographic Prevarications, was shown in six one-person exhibits in as many years (2007 to 2012). Koenig's long-term documentary project, Contemporary Views Along the First Transcontinental Railroad, spawned four articles (between 2014 and 2019).
Koenig has published articles in Lenscratch and Pictorialist more recently. He's currently working documenting the Great Divide.
