Michaela Moscouw is interested in the relationship between the verbal and the non-verbal, or the (im)possibility of an analogy between language and image. In the »Volga« series, she expresses her pleasure in the visual and certain forms of music: the twelve large-format black and white photographs, which are conceived both serially and as individual images, represent an attempt to visually describe individual stages of a daily routine in the Waldviertel. The title evokes program music; the musical intention is reinforced by the insertion of notes themselves, which are excerpts from Renaissance sheet music. The musical moments correspond – to a certain extent synaesthetically – with the photographic ones: the attributes given to the music, such as impressionistic, emotional, etc., are visually corresponded to by the fleetingness, vagueness, etc., of the photographic formation.
The vertical triptychs of a wintry hike in »Beethoven-Gang« suggest analogies to Beethoven’s piano music through their intense black and white contrast.
In »Perfect Happiness«, she uses photographic subversion to ironize the joy of drinking beer. How decisive travel (movement) is in Moscouw’s work can be seen in the three-part series »Ihr Zugbegleiter«, in which she pictorially recreates the train beat, the movement by means of cadence intervals (half picture – whole picture – half picture).
from: Carl Aigner, FOTOHOF Info, issue 1+2/1988