seek and see

The story begins with glistening reflexes on softly rippling water, a male silhouette standing out darkly against the sun. In a fluctuation of shadow and light, the visual narrative created collaboratively by Jenny Hasselbach and Ferdinand Peuker unfolds in poetic, associatively interwoven black-and-white images. Taken in the summer of 2024 on the artists’ joint journeys through Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and southern France, the photographs operate simultaneously on various levels, evoking palpable atmospheric impressions, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations of the places the two protagonists encountered: most of these natural environments featuring anthropomorphically curving trees and glittering bodies of water, focusing on close-ups of an intricate spider’s web or of naked skin, alongside details of cultural artifacts, a lion’s head made of stone, a geometrically angled iron lattice, a sculptural human figure, or a pair of long-fingered rubber gloves that recall a woman’s slender hands.Titled “seek and see,” the fragmentary constellation of scenes revolves around the dialectical tension between the visible and the invisible, between revealing and concealing, true-to-life representation, abstraction, and evasive mystery. It thus challenges viewers to take both a closer look at and to question the depicted phenomena in terms of what is made accessible and what is being hidden in this tale of constantly shifting meanings and points of view—an ambiguity that the italicizations in the heading subtly indicate. Contrary to the dream-like mood that pervades the sequence of analog and digital images, the compilation is based purely on ‘straight’ photography, reflecting the artists’ respective training in documentary approaches at the renowned Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin-Weißensee, which counts Ute Mahler, Sibylle Bergemann, and Arno Fischer among its prolific teachers.
Excerpt of "Documenting Magic" by Belinda Grace Gardner