Werner Pawlok

Werner Pawlok (born 1953 in Stuttgart) is a German artist and photographer known for his celebrity and art photography, especially for his work with the 20×24-inch Polaroid Camera.

Werner Pawlok started his first studio in 1977 as a self-taught photographer.

In the same year he became a tutor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart.

In 1984 he became the first western photographer to work officially in East-Germany with East-German models.

He collaborated with the Fashion Designer Helmut Lang on the project "Fashion in East-Berlin" published in magazines such as Wiener and Style & the family tunes.

In 1985 Kodak commissioned Pawlok for the series "Around the World in 40 days" shown at the 1986 photokina, Cologne in a solo exhibition.

In 1988 he started working with the Polaroid 20×24-inch camera and moved to TriBeCa in New York City to work on his art projects.

In the same year he invented the transfer technique using the 20×24 Polaroid Camera to start his series "Photography Paintings".

With this series Werner Pawlok emphasizes his intention to dispel the traditional categorisation separating photography from painting.

The concept of the shots aims to evoke the style of European classical portrait painting but without imitating or even quoting it.

In the same year Gunter Sachs became one of Pawlok's first collectors.

Also in 1988 Werner Pawlok photographed Leigh Bowery, an Australian performance artist.

Following on, in 1989, was the "Transfers" series.

From Pawlok's experimental handling of processes, techniques and image carrier media emerges a pictorial style that doesn't need visual reference within reality.

With "Transfers", the photographer becomes a painter.

Faces and flowers are the most prevalent subjects.

A large format Polaroid, which is transferred through a complex process to a heavy, rough-textured hand made paper or canvas, produces the image.

The calculated exchange of the photochemical layer simultaneously combining with the amalgam of coincidence.

Here, Pawlok is a painter and alchemist at the same time.

Due to their so thoroughly induced metamorphoses into a new and singular pictorial space, the results of this manipulation could easily be named transmutations.

Within the peculiar profundity these works radiate, the developing process seems to continue to have an effect.

Their materiality reminds one of an artistic principle of modernity which doesn't make use of pictorial means solely in order to express, but elevates them to be the purpose themselves.

Pawlok´s unique Polaroids became part of the Polaroid Collection.

In 1990 he began with his cycle "Stars & Paints" a series of one hundred 20×24-inch unique Polaroids of celebrities including Sir Peter Ustinov, John Malkovich, Roman Polanski, Dizzy Gillespie, Jean Paul Gaultier, Juliette Binoche and Jane Birkin.

The desire to be someone else lights up the star-cult of our times.

The step from the juggler on the ramp of a medieval fairground booth to the hype of the media world is much smaller than expected.

The idea is ingenious and perfidious at the same time: They, the Stars, have engaged in this game, they slipped over on the banana skin that was handed to them.

They can be given credit for this, the Stars, the real ones, because the memory of the, should we say, precarious origin of their prominence is still alive within the best.

Maybe it is even the pleasure of a hide-and-seek game that tempts these people, whom we admire so much, to engage in the set that Werner Pawlok provides and that drives Pedro Almodóvar, director and connoisseur of the women, to "quote himself" or that causes John Malkovich, the ghost-lighting chameleon amongst the Hollywood actors, to reveal parts of his innermost self in front of this seemingly archaic camera.

There is one image within the series, a self-portrait of the initiators of the project, in which some waggishness seems to be sparkling out of the picture.

We, the viewers possibly benefit from a secret agreement between both the photographer and photographed person, which knows about the fragility of success on stage.

In May 1992 Edition Domberger, published under the patronage of King Juan Carlos of Spain, and documenta IX, the edition COLUMBUS - IN SEARCH OF A NEW TOMORROW, featured the work of 37 artists including Joseph Beuys, Max Bill, Sandro Chia, Eduardo Chillida, Christo, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Longo, Antoni Tàpies and more.

Werner Pawlok was part of the project with his Crying Monkey, portraying a monkey in a crucified position on golden leaves.

Also in 1992 Mercedes-Benz commissioned Pawlok to photograph their collection of classic cars, icons of motoring including the unique Silver Arrows racing cars driven by the likes of Fangio and Moss.

For this, his "Master Pieces" series, he again used the 20×24 Polaroid camera, transferring the Polaroid negative film onto canvas and thus creating an impression similar to painting.

In 1993 Werner Pawlok completed the series "Crying Animals" photographed with the 20×24 Polaroid camera.

In 1996 he started with the cycle of images named "Dantes Commedia", an interpretation of Dante Aligheri's Divina Commedia or Divine Comedy.

The first time that Werner Pawlok produced a full series, of 33 pictures, using digital imaging.

He does not illustrate the selected cantos, he rather conceptualises visionary image metaphors which reflect Dante's verses with a resolute gesture but still develop their own vocabulary.

Dante's Inferno is cone shaped.