This is one of my favourites. For me, there is so much symbolism in it and of course I know the person depicted. Therefore I don’t think this work can ever have the same meaning for anybody else. I believe the viewer will find their own meaning in it, hence I don’t like to explain…
However, with this image I will describe how I technically put things together.
The original title of the work is: “Kaiser, König, Bettelmann” (engl. “Emperor, King, Pauper”). Broadly speaking, my intention is to show that any person can be (or should be allowed to be) any of these characters at times. Hopefully they will be well balanced. For a wider audience I would call it “Modern Man”. Now I really mean MAN, not mankind.
In all three parts of the triptych I used the same four photographs to create the background. Those four images are symbolic on their own
1) a close-up of stone wall and wooden door with flaky paint
2) a window looking from the inside out
3) a frayed lace curtain
4) an iron observation tower in the woods of on an Eastern German island.
The four images were combined to support the person’s poses (strong, balanced and weak).
It all developed from the balanced person’s photograph, which was a simple holiday snapshot and the other two people shots were taken to match what I had started.
dedepuppets 