lschwab@sympatico.ca
In photography, under what conditions does a fashion model become a classical figure? When do photographs of architecture underline the sculptural quality of buildings? The photographs of Lilian Schwab encompass both these processes. In our digital world, now more than ever before, photographs have become so ubiquitous that they risk losing their meaning. To arrest our gaze and have us look again, artist-photographers must develop strategies that foster contemplation. Lilian Schwab works with that goal in mind. Further, the surface and texture of the print must become the focus of the work transforming the photograph-as-window into the photograph-as-object. Lilian Schwab is successful in reaching this aim: in her textural still-lives, especially in the photographs of fruit, the pigment of the object and the pigment of the photographic emulsion conjoin to become one. Pigmentation and materiality are emphasized. This applies as well to some portraits that also highlight photographic texture. Also, in her work, the use of tints and sepia evoke an archaic photographic materiality.
Twentieth-century French artist Marcel Duchamp—arguably the first conceptual artist—coins a useful phrase we he writes about “the art coefficient of art.” Lilian Schwab “art” strategies in photography are powerful: the presence of mise-en-scène in some still-lives that recall classical paintings; reductive means of representation in photographs of wire, twigs, leaves and dried flowers; surprising triptychs bringing together disparate things such as figures and eggs; a polaroid shot of a cup on a red couch recalling early Surrealism—all add to “the art coefficient of art.” There is a mystery in Lilian Schwab’s beautiful body of work: her relatively bare photographs of Paris, Bilbao and Prague stand in contrast to her shots of Asia, teeming with activity. However, the common ground in her body of work is not difficult to discern: the series entitled “Year 2000,” featuring celebratory displays of costumed figures, points the way to a key dynamic in her photographs, to a focused desire to re-enchant. We live in an era in which the everyday is dominated by two-dimensionality. The photographs of Lilian Schwab engage with sensorial depth in their beautiful activation of haptic vision. Hers is an intense photographic reverie imbuing the everyday with magic, material elixirs and profound life-forces.