I’ve always wanted to live in the imagination of Werner Rohde. He was born in 1906 and died in 1990 when I was just 9 years old. The fact that we were alive at the same time excites me. The fact that I could have met the man whose photographs hinge between surrealism and theater makes my heart tremble with joy. A mask captured. A face painted. A performance in each portrait revealed. A woman with a flower over her lips staring into his eyes from a mirror, persuading him to come closer, to look deeper. A self-portrait showing the gentleness of Werner with a punching ball. Werner able to capture the movement of the punch, and the stillness of himself behind it, the image invoking the essence of the moving image of a film.
Another image, this time of a mannequin, a reproduction of a human form, to be photographed with such emotion, with such care that he gives it a humanness, as if it were always alive. Photographs of soldiers and dolls thriving. Werner creating voices and stories and personalities as a child does, allowing these toys to become more than just toys but to be creatures who thrive in our world. Werner was able to create a universe where everything is moving and breathing and loved, one that we all desire to be a part of. And sometimes, I like to pretend that at some point, we crossed paths unknowingly.
-Jen Fisher