Mortadella-Kragen. Photograph

Uwe Schramm, born 1945 in Leipzig. At the end of the 50's my family turned it's back on the DDR for the usual and well known reasons. In 1973 I began my advertising career as junior art-director at TBWA in Frankfurt, Progressing to art-director for various national and international advertising agencies. After ten years I became self-employed and founded the design agency CDS with emphasis on corporate, graphic and packaging design. The work for my commercial clients was intensive and time consuming, mainly with the design of products and packaging. There was always a yearning to do something that fulfilled my own criteria and visual expression. My aim was to see things from another perspective other than advertising, where marketing had strict rules and restraints. Instead of for who, why, for what, where and when, my interests have always been towards what and how. Removing the blinkers, to enable one to see that there is more than meets the eye, what one hasn't been able to see before, from yourself and the world around you. Photography, for me, is the ideal medium, because it enables one to focus clearly on the image and carry a message. My aim is to reduce the subject and picture to the absolute essential minimum whilst giving the observer a subliminal message and other interpretation.... The supposed obvious has become, through my picture, foreign. The subject in the picture is seen in a new light, or better still, takes on a second meaning and invites a second inquisitive look. The result is another interpretation of everyday objects which invites the viewer to produce his own views.