Untitled 1980

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg made this untitled gelatin silver print, and what strikes me first is its structure. The composition is so immediate and architectural. It's like she is thinking about how to construct a space with light and shadow; the contrast is so strong that the picture feels like a drawing made with a very dark pencil. Notice the way the light filters through the thatched roof, creating a textured pattern of dark and light that leads our eye deeper into the frame. I keep coming back to the doorway, which feels both inviting and secretive. The roughness of the materials makes me think of Arte Povera artists like Jannis Kounellis. There’s that same sense of poetry in the everyday, a transformation of humble materials into something profound. Like Kounellis, Schulz-Dornburg is interested in the poetics of place and how we build our worlds. Art isn't just about what we see, but how we see and what we choose to frame.