 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(July 2024) |
Paul Albert Leitner (born 1957 in Jenbach) [1] is a photographer from Austria.
| This biographical article is written like a résumé .(July 2024) |
Paul Albert Leitner (born 1957 in Jenbach) [1] is a photographer from Austria.
Paul Albert Leitner trained as a photographer from 1973 to 1976; in 1984 he moved from Tyrol to Vienna and has worked as a freelance artist ever since. [1] His photography is strongly influenced by his travels, [2] he is said to keep "a travel diary in the photographic medium". [3] [4]
For photography historian Marie Röbl, Leitner made a development from "staged photography, dedicated above all to a 'search for one’s own self-cognizance’ by means of collages, repainting, mirroring techniques, projections and shadow play”, to traditional “straight photography". Because of his pronounced drive to collect things photographically and in other ways, "he has to face an ever increasing torrent of images” and various other items he gathered while travelling, [5] which he deals with “through an encyclopedic drive for ordering and cataloguing his inventory”. "Kunst und Leben" [Art and Life - the title of an early book by him] (still separated in the title of one of his early books) were thus interwoven from then on. His series “Exkurs über das Reisen” [Excursus on Travelling], in which he himself often took on the role of fictional characters, could be seen as a transitional phase. [6]
Book editor Rainer Iglar describes Leitner's photographic approach (2018): When he, who always travels and for whom "photography is the adequate means for the uninterrupted work on a poetic chronicle", returns home, he goes on "desk duty", he arranges and edits his pictures, he makes small prints from his 35mm color films and sticks them on labeled, titled and numbered index cards. Leitner's picture archive - his apartments have always been more like archives - comprises more than seventy thousand pictures from all over the world. [7] Cultural journalist Johanna Hofleitner underlines his insistence on a working process developed for analog photographic workflows. [8]
In Leitner's travel photography, it is not "the exoticism of foreign worlds" that is decisive factor (Rainer Iglar [7] ), but rather "the recognition of the self" (Urs Stahel [9] ). In his "literary” photography, he pursues the "concept of a staged photograph that tells stories of an almost floating reality with romantic irony (and self-irony)." [1] In his travel photographs, Leitner repeatedly appears as a protagonist. In these self-portraits, he emphatically adopts a certain pose, which he himself attributes to Gilbert and George, among others, and for which he had a so-called "travel suit" specially made. [8]
Works by Paul Albert Leitner can be found (among others) in these public collections: Fotomuseum Winterthur, Wien Museum, [10] Belvedere Collection, Vienna [11]
Extensive interviews in:
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