Lutz Hilgers

The Düsseldorf photographer Lutz Hilgers presents New York as if it was an illuminated stage. Towering buildings, devoid of life, gather before a dark night sky, their abstract forms tracing the unusual perspective of the camera, their contours sharply defined. Yet everything appears remarkably unrealistic. Are we looking at a photograph, a montage, or a digitally created image? Is the ghostly light real? Are the shadows of the buildings the sole witnesses to this scene or are they too part of an elegant, perfectly staged deception?
The mixture of realism and abstraction in Lutz Hilger’s New York images, his “Darklight” series, lends the pictures an air of secrecy and allows them to exert a strong pull on the viewer. These photographs of New York focus on the alienation of the familiar. The decisive means to achieve this is light. Hilgers is particularly interested in the special atmosphere produced by moonlight or, rather, the light from the moon. The saturated black of the sky has a depth we might imagine only possible in space, creating for our eyes a surreal and yet comforting atmosphere.
In this way Hilgers is able to see the city, already captured in so many different ways, from a completely new perspective. He translates a known reality from imagination into art photography through his subjective perception. Digital techniques allow Hilgers to strengthen the impression that a reality is created in his fantasy. This produces, as shown in the “Darklight” series, an exaggerated realism, one so broad that reality appears to disappear behind art.

Stephan Reisner

Exhibitions in London (UK), Berlin, Hamburg and Düsseldorf (Germany)