| Introduction |
by Andreas
Weber |
Estonia personifies more than any of the other new
European Community members the dynamic, its inheritance
from old European traditions, arduous Soviet influence,
fresh creativity, and anticipated future. Followed
from these, Estonia is a nation with breaks and chances
- a country of non-simultaneity and melancholic vitality.
This collision cast a spell over the photographer
Christoph Otto - even to such an extent that he traveled
several times through Estonia even spending two weeks
in a decrepit bus of a touring cinema enterprise.
What he documented is a region representing simultaneously
all parts of the world and its possibilities. And
what he brought back are impressive pictures demonstrating
that life is taking place here, just here in this
little country situated in the northern periphery
of Europe.
In Estonia life is reborn every day, a life in pain
and in daze - in a feeling of elation of the little
rich boys and girls under the never ending day of
their Nordic lightsummer but also in the mood of resignation
of the lonesome tired women in front of their lodgings,
houses filigree as if made of paper, almost falling
apart, nearly completely submerged in the depth of
Russia, enwrapped by their wood fire and the permanent
fresh breath of the never ending forests reaching
the horizon. Life is extending to an infinity of nothingness
in the soap bubbles Elizabeth is blowing in front
of the dreaming eyes of her boyfriend Märten:
the success just before changing into failure - in
the gleaming balance of a moment.
Christoph Otto has the instinct great photographers
do possess, that is to release the shutter in the
very moment when the magic crack happens when vitality
bursts open in a second of uncertainty and non-protection
before returning again to a steady direction. His
photos reveal scenes like tiny films in shortened
form. Each photo is the turning point of a never tearing
bow, the tightened changing point of our solar plexus
in the way the girl reaches it by swinging in the
climax of the summer, at the highest point of her
childhood, the sandals already on the feet of a woman.
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