I work in series because, like composers, painters or filmmakers, I want to articulate between the elements. My aim is to break the moment out of its context. Most people still present the photographed moment as a merit. For me, that’s a real curse because I can’t work as intensively as painters and can’t put as much into a picture as they do.
If you are open-minded and engage with other art forms such as film, poetry and drawing, you realize what photography lacks. When you memorize a poem, when you listen to a musical analysis, when you add up while drawing, you learn how to express something; when you take a picture, you leave out everything that is unimportant.
I am interested in technique and composition, but they must be subordinate to the “unconditional interest in the motif”, the unconditional interest in the object to be depicted. By that I mean either a great longing that you feel, that you can’t define, that you think you won’t be able to fulfill in this life, or you don’t know how to do it. With photography, you can come very close to partially satisfying this longing.
from: Friedl Kubelka-Bondy, FOTOHOF Info, issue 3+4/1987