Ivo Mayr (Germany)

Passers-By (2007)

Programme: Galeria Entasis, Nowy Rynek 1 Thursday (19.03) Start 20:30

Born in 1975 in Füssen, southern Germany. In 1996 he moved to Cologne to study Geography. Due to his passion for photography he broke off this studies and worked as a photographic assistant for one year before he took up his studies in Photography at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund. He went on educational journeys to China and South Korea. During 2007-2008 he received a scholarship to work as a city photographer in Koblenz. With his photographies he won several prestigious awards and nowadays has numerous exhibitions in both Germany and abroad.

Passers-By
This photo work is the result of a scholarship that I gained in summer 2007. My task was to create an artistic portrait of the city Koblenz in Germany. The character of a city is determined by different factors: of its geography and architecture and, above all, of the people, who live in it. My intention in the work is to give an impression of the city by focusing the individual persons themselves. To get closer to Koblenz and its people, I decided for an offensive tactic: for the work I addressed people in the streets directly, – persons who had attracted my attention due to their clothes, vibrancy, posture etc. I portrait them detached from the ground, hanging on walls, trees or lanterns. As pieces of find that you place clearly visible on the spot where you had found them, i.e. a glove hanging on a fence. These motives represent thereby the specifics of Koblenz – in a very casual way. By playfully integrating typical places into the picture composition, taking in scene the passers-by on this  stage, I apperently can incorporate documentary and city-historical aspects besides. In this manner I create new perspectives of well-known sights like the  German corner or the historical city centre with its pretty picturesque lanes, but I also show some of the socalled Koblenzer eyesores which are also a typical part of the city .