Jochen Raiss – a sort of photographer without a camera – proves how one has to go farther and dig deeper. To know according to first paradigms, playful and amateurs. Walking through the 50 ‘black and white photo bins of German flea markets, the compiler first discovered a very fashionable theme at that time: women in the trees. They were the subject of two successful books.
Taking off from this success he proposes another theme of that time where golds – at least its ersatz – became the faithful companion of playful photographs. Often in these images women look good enough to eat. But the animal is no longer cannibal. Raised on its two hind legs they become playful pretexts far from their forests, to attract the client of more or less professional photographers of post-war Germany. The bear thus takes place in the drifts of memory ..
Jean-Paul Gavard-Perret
Jochen Raiss – Polar Bears
Hatje Cantz
Berlin, 2019, 112 p., 16 E.
