Black Earth (1989)

A Photographic Recollection

A photographer cannot escape from the impetuous passion of his feelings; he lives every minute of his life in his pictures. The sequence of stolen moments is sublimely intense, as if peered at through a half closed door. Inanimate objects enliveded on film.
Karel Fonteyne’s pictorial imagination appears refined sharply to a point in his endless display of contrasts: in demureness as opposed to ostentation: in the colours of a black and white picture. Minimalism refined. Think of color - frail pigments, ground on black and white: think of the black of Goya which is never quite black but ink and every color in between: think of stained faces and white mousseline secrets encircling the body: think of a midnight knight without armour. His naked arabesque is no accident of muscle, but an arched sculptured movement refined to a perfect shape for one feeling, diaphanous moment - a captured moment.
The optique of a photograph is part of real life. Through the eye of a lens, the shapes, shadows and tones deepen, dance and disengage. They are enlivened around the vision in the making. An urban amazon: a neo-pagan. Her dark stained torso moves like a fragile petal, and her limbs are as strong and poised as a cut stem. She shudders and rises with a roar and the frenzied affects become an almost-silent mortal whisper. She recoils, draws herself up then slumps with world-weary resignation for her portrait. The moment is captured. And already it has become a memory of paradise lost.

Marcus Von Ackermann

Marcus was the fashion director at a range of European magazines from French Vogue to Wallpaper A popular figure in the fashion industry, von Ackermann was known for his elegant character and for working with top fashion photographers, including Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Peggy Sirota, Arthur Elgort and Karl Lagerfeld.

Technic: Printed on Kodak Ectalure barite paper out of production .Papersize 50x60cm/Printsize 40x50cm. Ed10./Selenium protected. From this vintageprints (VP) who are printed in 1989 are a few prints left indicated underneath the photographs.