untouched touched retouched

Impressum
Images: Birgit Wudtke
Text: Ursula Meyer-Rogge
Textlayout: Jennifer Kuck
1/2013
Edition 300 Stk.

Printing
broschure / softcover-with stamping / textcover / numbered und signed
4 colour-Offprint
Druckerei in St. Pauli, Hamburg


FOREWORD BY URSULA MEYER-ROGGE

UNTOUCHED TOUCHED RETOUCHED

Landscapes - Portraits - Computerimages ("retouching layers") in three chapters

Birgit Wudtke´s is an unusual book of photographs in the sense that it resembles a storybook. The layout of the book transforms the photographs into a visual story, thus conveying the content. The layout exploits images of various size, pages may be blank, white or have a black background, the conscious placement of the images within the rectangular format of the pages of the book as well as their position on the right or left side of the book is carefully considered.

The sequence of the photographs are grouped into three chapters which allude to specific themes, namely, `untouched touched retouched.´ Touch, in the German translation conveys a gentleness, a sensitivity, it goes beyond the sense of touch implying that one is moved or touched by something, or in the perfect tense, was touched by something. Thus a translation of the word should include the component of retouched or "touched again", a meaning, still contained in the French origin of the word.
Further, the tonality and sequence of the tones within the title are reflected in the image formats and in the small and modest format of the book. The intimacy of the book conveys the imagined presence of the photographer in her images.(...)