Fack
Rainer Sioda
Pogobooks
English and German
Text by Michael Biedowicz
Softcover
120 pages
210 x 260 mm
2017
ISBN 9783942547574
Pictures of landscapes, Generally I find them calming. When it comes to the pictures in Rainer Sioda’s FACK series, however, that feeling is refuses to materialize. This is less due to the barren Brandenburg countryside than it is to the left of its inhabitants, which the photographer presents us with pitilessly. What are these strange remnants? Painted slurry left by paintball combatants in a pine forest, cars that look like armored personnel carriers, and graffiti which, in its open, brutal expression, paint any trace of street-art wit. ‘There is no peaceful back country’ reads One of the inscriptions on the wall of a residential block. Hinterland? If we take the military meaning of the word, the country appears to be in a state of. Who the aggression is directed against is not always clear. My guess is against everything and nothing, against everything foreign, and against itself. The backeland-dwelling masculine world is evidently in a serious crisis. Sioda brings the necessary level of irony with him. The images are simultaneous document and transcend time. With a conceptual stringency, Sioda recounts his story of the countryside and (invisible) people at a time of uncertainty and defiant hatred paired with a trace of self-pity (inscription: ‘I have always loved you’). The photo series is permeated by a silence that crescendos to despair and creates an icy emotional chill.
About the artist
Rainer Sioda was born in 1958 in Treuenbritzen in Germany. He is a Berlin based photographer.
rainersioda.de
About the Publisher
PogoBooks is an independent publisher of photography books, artist’s books and zines based in Berlin. Established in 2009, Claudio Pogo created a publishing house that collaborated with emerging and established artists from all over the world. They believe in a future printed on paper, and conceive the printed artwork as a unique art form. Since 2016 PogoBooks has worked in collaboration with Outer Space Press, where their titles are designed and produced.
pogobooks.de
