ARTIST'S STATEMENT  There have been many changes in recent years in photography. The recording and playback components were in technical terms changed and almost perfected. But technological improvements or changes do not mean automatically an improvement of the photographic results. The quality of a photograph is first of all fixed by the visual statement, the technical equipment plays a subordinate role.  The expressive power of a photograph depends above all on the photographer who can translate his ideas into a picture through his perception, his sense for light and shade and artistic competence - no matter if created through an analog enlargement or through a digital print.  Every good photography is based on the photographer‘s point of view, which is based on his subjective experience. Of course the photographic process is objective and confront therefore the photographer with the difficult task of the „production of a picture“, which shows, if possible, the subjectivity of the original „seeing“.  Every time I take pictures, I don't photograph a motive, but the picture of a motive. To transform this motive into a picture, one must convert it into the "medium photography", meaning that everything you observed at the motive, experienced, felt you have to express with the given characteristics of the medium - the whole pallet of the grey tones . The more exactly one knows the tools, the more successfully the conversion is. The successful picture - and not the motive itself- then represents the photographic correspondence, the photographic equivalent of the experiences with this motive. In this doing the artistic photography arranges itself into a row with all other representing arts.  However I can not make and do not want to make the attempt to describe the creative-emotional motivation of my work, to analyze or define it. The inspiration and meaning of a photograph (or any work of art created with other means) is appropriate in the work itself. Those endless discussions on creativity are going, for my concept, senseless round in circles; their purpose seems to be me rather to pay homage to the fashion and to make burnt offerings on any altars then to serve the common recognizing. ONLY THE PICTURE CONTAINS THE MESSAGE.     VITA 1960 _ Born in Vienna, Austria 1970 _ First (own) Camera (Kodak Instamatic) 1977 _ Seminar for art photography with Friedl Kubelka _ First own darkroom "experimental" groping my way over to Black & White-Photography 1980 _ Attendance of the "Grafische"  (Visual Art College), Vienna June 1984 _ Final examination at the "Grafischen" as top of the class 1988 _ Master's degree in Photography 1991 onwards _ Freelance Photographer for various international Photo Agencies, Studio for commercial photography _ Intensive preoccupation with Black & White-Photography Fine Art Photography _ giving evening classes in Black & White Photography since 2010 _ Working as a artist in Fine Art Photography only, no more commercial work. Several longer stays abroad _ Vancouver, Canada; Boston & New York, USA since 2013 _ Living and working partly in Moscow, Russia and Mödling, Austria since 2019   Living and working in Southern Burgenland, Austria             Vladimir Mayakovsky and me. [Photo: Viktoria Dematté] All content copyright© 2016 Chris Dematté