Dead Sea, Jordan, 2009 – Michael Kruscha
$250 (Paper) or $500 (Aluminum dibond)
| Dimensions | 16 × 24 in |
|---|---|
| Media/Material/Technique | Photograph on paper (available on aluminum dibond) |
| Date | 2009 |
| Photo Credit | Courtesy of the Artist |
Artist Statement
We have lost the ability to wait. We have apps that tell us when the next bus is due, or if it’s coming at all, and we don’t set off before we have all this information. And when the unexpected happens, we still don’t wait. We stare at our cell phones and occupy ourselves with what’s going on somewhere else. We are never where we are. We don’t wait and we don’t expect anything anymore. One of my favorite quotes is by the photographer Arno Fischer: “When I take a photo of a man at a bus stop, there should be more to see in the picture than a man waiting for a bus.” To that I can add: whenever I take a photo of a bus stop where no one is waiting, and no bus comes, there’s more to see in the picture than a bus stop without a bus and without people. That, at least, is what I’m aiming for. Isn’t it often the case that we spend more time thinking about what’s missing than about what’s there?
It was during a trip to Oman I first discovered bus stops built in the desert, and those images inspired me to begin a long-term photo series that I then continued over the next 12 years at very different places all over the world. I mainly photographed my subjects in lonesome, remote places, where you wonder if someone will arrive or depart.
About the Artist
Michael Kruscha is a painter, graphic artist, and photographer who lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He was born in 1961 in the town of Hoyerswerda, in what was then East Germany, and from 1999-2001 he studied painting under Daniel Fischer at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and projects around the world: in Austria, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Slovenia, and Slovakia, as well as in Germany and the United States. The book of his photographs of bus stops was awarded the 2018 Bronze Level German Photo Book Award.
