Ludwig Schönherr

Ludwig Schönherr began making photographs and paintings in the late ‘50s. In the mid-‘60s, his interest in the visual arts shifted to film. From 1967-1970, a period of intense productivity in European experimental film more generally, Schönherr made scores of short super 8 and 16mm films that explored specific technical, aesthetic, and representational aspects of the medium, namely, the zoom, the use of flickering color, and the depiction of the face. At approximately the same time, Schönherr acquired his first black and white television and produced a lengthy series of “electronic films” or single-frame films of television images, interrupted by flickering color. This beautiful and ever watchable series marked the start of the artist’s lifelong focus on the ubiquity of television and popular cultural images in modern life. Schönherr has also produced numerous single and multi-frame photographs of television images. Of his preoccupation with television, Schönherr quipped, “Life in television is much more interesting than real life outside.” In the mid- to late ‘70s, over the course of a number of visits to New York, Schönherr produced an astounding 107 hour, super 8 mm film, a “visual diary” that consists of impressions of the city, its inhabitants, and its television culture. In the mid-80s, Schönherr made a similarly stunning portrait film of the city of Hamburg. The sixty minute film, “Unknown Hamburg” (1983-8)–the artist’s only work produced with public funds–intersperses…