Hans Jessel exhibition opens in Westerland
Under the title “Sylt. Seascape-Cityscape”, the Nord-Ostsee Sparkasse presents photographs by Hans Jessel in its premises in Westerland. The idea for the exhibition, which opened on September 16, 2016, came from Nospa CEO Thomas Menke.
With his prints, calendars, postcards and book publications, Hans Jessel has had a decisive impact on the island's imagination since the 1990s, feeding the “collective memory”, as the journalist Michael Stitz once put it. The motifs in the Westerländer Sparkasse Gallery show the two sides of Sylt: on the one hand, untouched, dreamlike nature and, on the other hand, the urbanized landscape with its sometimes disturbing appearances.
Hans Jessel's beach panorama of Rantum
“A wonderful example of Hans Jessel’s photographic art,” I said in my opening speech, among other things, “is his panoramic photo of the beach at Rantum from the year 2000. In this image, the creatively used longer exposure time blurs the contours of clouds and surf In contrast to the sharply depicted dune and beach landscape, creates a magical, almost surreal atmosphere. The dreamlike infinity that this motif expresses is reinforced by the art of composition, in which Hans Jessel builds tension with the horizon line moved to the upper third of the picture and the diagonals of the spray, flushing seam and edge of the dune. For me, this recording, to which there is a counterpart called 'Sea near Samoa', is one of the strongest compositions in Hans Jessel's entire oeuvre, or, to put it another way: This is great cinema."
The exhibition runs until November 18, 2016 and can be viewed during the Sparkasse's opening hours at Westerländer Maybachstrasse 2.
