Germany

Volker Schrank

Biography

Volker Schrank (b. 1965) is a German photographer who lives and works in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied in Kassel, Dortmund and Limerick, Ireland with Gunter Rambow,
Floris M. Neusüss, Cindy Gates as well as Peter Morgan.

He is the initiator of the international photo festival 'Fotosommer Stuttgart'.
In his photographs, Volker Schrank abstracts concrete figures and themes from the living world by removing them from the familiar visual context. The viewer sees himself challenged to complement these motifs imaginatively, to complement them with his own perceptions, memories and stories, thus seemingly dissolving abstraction again.

He became well-known for his collection Stars of Truth, which portrayed Germany's major television newscasters in a new artistic way. In his work, Schrank devotes himself to the photographic exploration of myths.

In 1999, he won the Award of the Federation of Independent Photo Designers. In 2000, he received a scholarship from the Art Foundation Baden-Württemberg.

He is represented by bildkultur, in Stuttgart, Germany.

In this series of portraits, Volker Schrank turns the process of how a hero is constructed in the media into this topic: the creation of a German myth. Schrank depicts the players of the 1974 World Championship squad not as a team but portrays them as individuals, directing the observer's focus towards the players' eyes as the most expressive part of their faces. He shows each player in the pose of a footballing hero and turns their personal features into the focal point of the picture. At the same time, he reconstructs the typecasting of footballers as he remembers them from the collector's cards of his youth. The details of the photos remain the same, all the pictures are of equal size, the players´ strip is uniform and blurred – just like the monochrome background. Despite his strong visual presence, the idol remains distant. Entranced and taller than life, the squad members of the 1974 German World Championship team stand for the myth, which they embody as footballing heroes in the collective memory beyond their own generation.

A table in a tavern or inn: the top is made of solid wood or veneer; it's easy-to-clean formica almost worn off. We rarely find a tablecloth covering it and flowers are practically non-existent. Sometimes there are pictures or photographs of long-forgotten guests or barkeepers on the walls behind the table, but often also antlers, pitchers or other devotional objects. In a sense, it is a table like any other. If there wasn’t that little sign Stammtisch [round table / regulars table] – an ash tray, a pennon, or a cast-iron sign, marking the table and its surrounding chairs and benches as a special territory, access only for certain persons.

But What is a Stammtisch? We all think we know. According to linguistic research, the German-speaking countries all associate identical elements of meaning. Some of the terms that are mentioned spontaneously are men, beer, and outspokenness – trust and sociability. In Stammtisch, Schrank has found an elegant and indirect manner to illustrate the rituals of societal discourse.

The figure “68“ denotes a decade of uprising. Youth rebelled not only in Germany, but across Europe, strongly opposing the existing power structures of the time, the education systems, the engrained cultural practices. The dissatisfaction of a whole generation was fed by highly different motives: 1968 had many faces. Volker Schrank presents people in his new portrait series, who shaped those years and were themselves profoundly formed by them – whatever may have happened to their lives afterwards.