The Big Picture

For many years, Thomas Kellner has been working with architecture and sights from all over the world, but in this work, created in the summer of 2014, he turns to one of the most breathtaking landscape motifs on earth: the Grand Canyon.

Kellner photographs the subject from several perspectives, thus breaking it down into its individual parts. He then assembles the contact sheets in their original size to create an overall composition. Since 1997 he has been using exclusively the prints of the contact sheets for his highly individual compositions. The distinguishing feature of this montage technique are the horizontal black stripes between the individual rows of pictures, which represent the consecutive numbering of the negative. Thus, the image dimension is also derived from the number of films used in the creation process, since it is a collage with 1:1 contact prints. The Big Picture consists of 60 films of 36 shots each, i.e. 2160 pictures taken in succession. The work defies the brown, red and green color elements of the rocks of the Grand Canyon and thus offers an overwhelming view. Viewed from close up, it shows the landscape in detail, and viewed from a distance, the close-ups create a coherent panorama.

Kellner transfers the international current of deconstructivism from architecture to photography by photographing buildings, people and landscapes, fragmenting them and then assembling them into a heterogeneous conglomerate of forms. In his photograph of the Grand Canyon, however, he refrains from playfully intervening in the composition of the individual parts. Kellner depicts this incredible landscape as it is and lets it speak for itself.