The beets Ingar Krauss has photographed as solitary, black-and-white figures in an undefined space provoke the question of what could have moved the artist to photograph them as if they were portrait subjects. They are part of a cycle of staged photos, planned as series, which Krauss has been working on for years. The sequences show plants in a space which was built by the photographer for these pictures. It is reminiscent of the miniature theatrical stages known as peep boxes, and of the daylight studios from the early days of classic photography. As a matter of fact, Krauss avoids all digital technology, and all the equipment he uses—a large- or medium-format camera, a tripod, black-and-white film, and the conventional type of darkroom, with its chemical development processes – defends analogue photography as an alchemical process of creating pictures that is also related to the visual arts, painting, and printmaking, in terms of craftsmanship. Apart from the seconds in which the open lens captures the motif, the creation of a photograph remains a long process that is controlled by hand and not calculated by programs, resulting in the image’s “appearance.”

The black-and-white of classic photography reinforces the plasticity of the fleshy root, whose variety of shapes make it different from other members of the beet family. Although the basic shape of the bulbous, upwardly tapering beet never changes very much, the deviations, especially on the surface, lend it a kind of individuality that sometimes even goes as far as anthropomorphic or animalistic features. Strands of roots lead from the tip into the earth, while the leaves reaching up to the light stem from the globular base. That means that the beets in the photographs are upside down, which is the only way to put them on a stage in front of a camera without any supports. Some of the rudimentary roots look like a misshapen hand with fingers spread; others are reminiscent of the aorta, arteries and veins of the human heart. The associations are many, from tree roots to unfamiliar creatures. At times there is even something uncanny about the beet’s changing form. This sense, however, has nothing to do with the “real” beet, but rather, with its transformation into a work of art, a photographic reproduction, which does not serve any biological teaching purposes but instead aims at the spiritual, where the Beta vulgaris enters the stage masked, as it were.

— Excerpt from a text by Eugen Blume

Ingar Krauss
Sugar Beets

Book presentation with Hartmann Books and the photographer on Friday, April 28, 2023, from 5 – 7 pm at Bildband Berlin!

Box: 22.5 × 29 × 3.5 cm
36 cards with tritone illustrations on chromo board
in foil-embossed slipcover, with
folding poster 64,5 × 90 cm and text insert
Text by Eugen Blume
German/English
Design: arc – Bartsch/Grimberg, Berlin
First Edition, 400 copies
Limited Edition available
ISBN 978-3-96070-096-8
hartmann-books.com