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The democratic art of Ulrich Mack

By Eric McHenry

In an enormous, airy studio on the fifth floor of what used to be an auto dealership, Ulrich Mack takes pictures with an antique mahogany view camera. After four decades as a leading photographer and a professor of visual communication in Germany, he's enjoying his artist-in-residence role at SFA and his creative space in 808 Commonwealth Ave.

"I have the possibility now, as an old man, to do what I want," he says. "Isn't that great?"

Ferry captain. Detlef Dethlefsen, 57. "The New Pellworm Steamship Company connects Pellworm and Nordstrand," says the text accompanying this photograph. "'Captain Detl' is head of the local unit of the German Sea Rescue Service."

But Mack handles artistic freedom in an unusual way. The more he has, the more he cedes to his subjects. He uses Polaroid film when shooting portraits because the instant prints allow him to show people rough drafts of themselves; then, if they wish, they can change postures or expressions. The ordinary folks pictured in Ulrich Mack: Island People, an exhibition that will occupy BU's 808 Gallery from November 17 to January 28, had just as much say in the composition of their own portraits as Mack did.

"They're almost self-portraits," Mack says. "I want to please people. I want to make their picture, not my picture. They're what's important."

The images in Island People are drawn from Mack's award-winning 1995 double book of the same title, an anthology of 144 black-and-white photographs taken in two isolated fishing communities: Pellworm, off the coast of Germany, and Harkers Island, North Carolina. The book, which at first glance appears to have two spines, unfolds at one end to reveal two discrete collections of 72 photographs. Each picture is accompanied by a few lines of text about its subject. And each has a counterpart in the other collection -- an image that, by virtue of its similarities, invites comparison. But these pairs don't necessarily appear on corresponding pages. Mack wants the people who see his photographs to have the same freedom of choice that he gave to the people in them.

"It's very democratic," he says.

The choices people make when being photographed, Mack discovered, are revelatory. He points to pictures of two shopkeepers, one from each island.

"These are the people who are most interested in money," he says. "Look at them! Look at how proud they are, leaning back, certain, knowing. They're brothers!"

He flips through the book, eventually finding the faces of two older men. One, according to the text, is a local politician and the former dyke master of Pellworm. The other is head of the Democratic Party and a former postmaster for Harkers Island. Both pose with their hands behind their backs and wear smiles that are tight-lipped and slightly askew.

"Look!" Mack exclaims. "Here's a politician. Here's a politician. Look at his mouth. Look at his mouth. Politicians!"

	Ferry captain. Stacy M. Davis, 60. "Stacy, captain of the car ferry between Cedar Island and Ocracoke, is married to souvenir shop proprietor Anna Kay," Mack writes. "They have five children."

He next locates the islands' ferry captains. Each stares suspiciously from the bridge of his boat. Mack recalls his encounters with them. One gave him only five minutes to take the picture. The other asked if he'd paid his fare.

Mack is among Germany's most esteemed photographers. A 1994 catalog assembled by several German museums in honor of his 60th birthday reveals the breadth of his achievement. Mack. 60 Photographs includes images from the Island People series, stunning portraits of such celebrities as Duke Ellington, Igor Stravinsky, Ernst Bloch, John F. Kennedy, and Henry Miller, and examples from his early work in commercial photography and photojournalism. One astonishing picture, taken on a Kenyan plain amid a herd of wild horses, won numerous awards in the 1964 World Press Competition, The Hague.

Mack worked as a staff photographer for Stern magazine in Hamburg from 1967 to 1972, and as a professor of visual communication at Dortmund Technical College in Dortmund, Germany, from 1975 to 1996. He began photographing the people of Pellworm in 1978, and four years later identified Harkers Island as its North American analogue.

"In 1982, I went to Harkers Island for the first time, for just half an hour," Mack says. "I saw three good faces and said, ‘This is my island.' And in ‘84 I came back and stayed for eight and a half months."

To photograph its denizens, Mack used a turn-of-the-century view camera. His devotion to vintage equipment, explains BU Art Gallery Director John Stomberg, is an integral part of his documentary mission.

"It is the equipment of the age of objectivity," says Stomberg, who wrote the catalog essay for the 808 exhibition. "He's really interested in trying to achieve human objectivity. Now he doesn't want to get into splitting hairs about it -- of course, objectivity is impossible. But he does want to sit back and be something of a deadpan observer, which in the age of postmodernism is a goal that has long since been discredited. The autobiographical presence of the artist is paramount in contemporary photography. What Mack tries to do is return to the interwar belief in objectivity. By going backward, he's moving forward."

"I don't think of myself as an artist," Mack says, "just as painters in the Middle Ages did not think of themselves as artists. They made things to describe. Honestly, I feel more like a Renaissance painter doing his work."

An opening reception for Ulrich Mack: Island People will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, November 17, in the 808 Gallery. The exhibition and all gallery events are free and open to the public. For more information, call 353-0922.

10 November 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations