Fabian Zapatka, o.T. from “VATER”, 2019, 61 x 80, Hand print, edition 1/3; 750 EUR
Text by Frank Steinhofer.
The actor Manfred Zapatka recently ended his stage career. His son, photographer Fabian Zapatka, accompanied him as he said goodbye. The pictures in the exhibition VATER are about this, which Pavlov’s Dog will show on 17 and 18 July 2021 (Opening: 16 July) in the free exhibition space erstererster in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg.
At the beginning of the exploratory project is the question: How can one open the way to the other person with the help of photography? Especially since this other person is one’s own father. A powerful figure who has not only played almost every role at the Deutsches Ensembletheater, from Tasso to Hamlet to Lorenzaccio, but at the same time appears in life in the role of the father. A multiple conundrum, then, which makes it necessary, on the one hand, not only to portray a person and his life at the theatre without reducing him to just that, and on the other hand, to reflect on the relationship between father and son, subject and photographer in the work.
Fabian Zapatka does not set anyone up according to his own ideas in his pictures, he does not dramatise, does not make an event big or small, or try to reproduce an authentic section of reality. Rather, his photography deals with the relationship to a reality and refers to webs of relationships. Between people, places and ultimately the instance of the photographer himself.
It is up to the viewer to decide how to relate to the images, which always open only a crack to a “half-open door”, as the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer wrote, leading to “a space for all”. In this photo essay, one sees a face of Manfred Zapatka, a unique face, and yet a face among faces, an incomparable life, and yet a life among equals, a unique father-and-son relationship, and yet, in excerpts, tangible for all of us.
Fabian Zapatka*1978, lives and works in Berlin; freelance photographer since 2006; various publications in renowned magazines (Qvest, Spex, Tempo, SZ-Magazin, LFI, Weltwoche, Human Globaler Zufall, Le Point, Die Zeit, GeoSaison, Spiegel); 2008 participation in the photo project “24 h Berlin”; 2010 solo exhibition “Festival of Festivals” Cinema Jenin in Haifa, Israel; 2015 “Perspective 1”, Distance over Time; 2020 “Vater” Kerber Verlag.
Opening: 16th of July 2021, 7-10 pm
Exhibition period: 17.07.–18.07.2021
pavlov’s dog
as guest at erstererster
Pappelallee 69
10437 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
