SHORT STORIES

'Short Stories' is the catalog from Richard Bram's 2020 exhibition at the Manheimmer Kunstverein.

According to Richard Bram, the narrative tone (“short stories”) must flow from the author to the reader or spectator, whether it be the great landscapes of London, the waters, the clouds, the shades (a quote: “Turner Morning”) that are  striking for their absence of people, or whether it is the crowds, x-rayed for individuals with their 'whys?’ ,because the child raises the gun to his father's back in Oaxaca (Mexico), or because two other children carry on their shoulders an enormous bamboo structure in Cambodia, at which the girls of Louisville smile or another at which they look (a more humorous photo) of two little dogs from Arezzo.

There is therefore an 'after' in every photograph that Bram captures in his travels from America to Asia and through Europe; and if the theory of 'codes', or signals of communication is valid, we grasp a meaning of expectation and surprise, of the reporter's will and self-sacrifice “reported”. Some images seem more self-significant to us: the sleeper in the Parisian Tuileries, another sleeper, at the Occupy Wall Street girl; the designer intent on copying a statue of the Hermitage. 

Being a street photographer, Bram often captures people in motion, the moment captured with a certain irony, (the man's head emerging from the hole in the door in Havana; the woman with Cortona purple dye looks blonde; the tourist from Rome takes a selfie next to a marble Pope kneeling). Bram's world therefore turns with the offer of something taking shape, suddenly, it’s the target. We will add our stories to his. And in a way, Bram always looks for beauty in his photos. But not beauty for beauty's sake, he seeks positive beauty, the beauty that helps you escapes, the beauty of life.

B.H.

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