On one of the breaks during the set-up of his exhibition at Brancolini Grimaldi, Peter Piller took some time to talk with me about his latest series STOP. I was very interested in knowing the reasons that led an artist like Piller—who usually presents anonymous and unknown facts that he digs out of local German newspapers—to deal with the most iconic event that our globalised contemporary society had to face in the last decade.
Peter Piller comes across as quite a reserved person but in speaking with me he revealed himself to be generously open and honest about himself and his work. It turned out to be a very nice conversation even considering my limited command of German that he was very gracious about.
Peter Piller—a.k.a Archiv Peter Piller—is an archive artist who, after graduating from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, worked as photo editor for the media agency Carat cataloguing regional newspapers.
Over the years he assembled a personal archive of thousands of images that he eventually decided to take out of a dusty closet and start working with them. Piller’s intervention lies in the selection of the images—which he strictly re-uses without captions—and the way he sorts them into thematic groups to create a typology of a phenomena. He is not focused on the image per se but rather on the meaning of the entire series of images.
He offers the viewer what could be considered open typologies. He doesn’t want to impose his vision but open a discussion and engage the viewer’s critical thinking in the process. This is crucial to Piller and it certainly makes him stand out among his peers and the previous generation of German photographers.
STOP is a selection of twenty images—divided into two groups of ten—that Piller cut out of local German newspapers published on the 13th and 14th of September 2001. The images capture the minute-long silent commemoration that was held in public places such as schools, factories and offices at 10 a.m. on the 12th of September 2001 in memory of the victims and the survivors of the terrorist attacks.
These images were collected and then put aside for almost a decade. Only just recently Peter thought it was the right time to retrieve them and produce STOP on the occasion of the imminent 10th anniversary of the event. As usual, this body of work doesn’t follow any specific principles but simply answers to Piller’s interest in creating typologies.
Considering his collaboration with publishers such as Christoph Keller and JRP|Ringier, I asked Peter if he considered releasing a book with this work. He openly told me that he didn’t feel the need. The project felt complete in that specific form for him and didn’t require any further developments. He did, however, admit that a book is the perfect way to celebrate the end of a project. Throughout our conversation he underlined several times the importance of bringing his endevours to a closure—to let them go and move forward.
Elisa Badii
Archiv Peter Piller
Stop
Until October 1, 2011
Brancolini Grimaldi
43-44 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4JJ
+44 (0)207 493 5721
