Daniel Gustav Cramer

Michael

David Gustav Cramer’s portraits are composed of simple, descriptive texts accompanied by found photographs, letters or other materials. The elements juxtaposed in each work operate like the lines of a Haiku. It is the tension between them that opens space for thought. The Portraits evoke the writing of Yasunari Kawabata or Robert Walser and the films of Yasujiro Ozu: a language of restraint that conceals an emotional struggle, a struggle which becomes ever more palpable in the effort of its concealment. Cramer’s works evolve as an ongoing form of research, like a traveler’s journal that describes human conditions, drawing on images of a collective experience and commonly shared memories. Through this process, Cramer taps into philosophical questions of the experience of time, the formation of language and images and the boundaries of perception.

This work, featuring a photo of Lance Armstrong taken by Buzz Aldrin during the 1969 moon landing, is entitled Michael, a reference to the Michael Collins, the astronaut who remained aboard the Apollo 11 during the expedition. The work operates as a sort of ‘expanded’ image, drawing parallels between the idea of objective scientific truth, represented by space exploration, and an objective truth in images. It draws our attention to the power of narrativity in history and images in the collective imaginary.