Laughing Camera (Laughing Camera)

Photographers cannot produce humor, wit, or comedy. They have to track it down in real life. The cartoonist depends on inspiration, the photographer on chance. Comic elements often congeal into a funny optical figuration; a similarity between a man and an animal, the proximity of like objects, the meeting of unlike objects, an optical illusion, the contrast between big and little, round and angular, and so forth. Sometimes, by making a movement freeze into a grotesque form, the camera can project a joke into our visual field. Such momentary petrification of movement and the accompanying transformation of the natural into the artificial is, is my (authors) opinion, something specifically photographic. Therein lies the strength of the camera artist. No one else can emulate him. But it is a very difficult feat. By Hanns Reich. Text by Heinz Held.