Stefan Drashan is an austrian artist photographer who travels to museums around the world in search of particular situations to portray. Among his most famous works are those that portray accidental similarities between the works and the observer who stands in front of them
 All images © courtesy of Stefan Draschan
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ITA - ENG
OTTOBRE 2024
How long does it take you to find the right moment to take the shot? Do you spend many hours observing and waiting for the right moment?
Some of my best shots I could even take 2 minutes after entering the museum halls, the longest wait in the last years was 9 minutes (I don’t
count that like in competitive sports but I see the time on the data when back home, I might look at that once a year :), I'm no hurry in any way but after 3100 photographs in 10 years of my main museum series (People
matching artworks) you get some routine. The first years of course were
different, but learning even through painful failures (too slow, blurry,
missed, wrong accidental ISO so fine art print is not possible which is like
non existent, memory card breaks,....) is great.

 Are there any circumstance where you couldn't find the match you had in mind? A work you're still waiting to immortalize?
Yes of course, with some results I’m happy now but f.e. some never
workout as I wish: Henri Rousseau in the Musée d’Orsay is an example,
but it’s mostly the regular position where it’s hanging that makes it so hard. 
Given the moment, the one in front of the Madonna by Antonello da
Messina in Palermo, it’s OK as he really was 1 of 5 visitors in total that afternoon in the museum (Covid time) so in reality I’m lucky to have at
least that shoot.  I love the painting so much I certainly want to creatively work
with it, I want to interact with it, to be connected with it, I often travel for one painting alone.
How did the idea for this series come about? Was it a coincidence?
Yes, but I just opened my eyes in the museum, I had a love for museums
before, of photography history as well so I knew of course Alecio de Andrade f.e. (and adored as I have an art history heaven of stars)...so when you have something you like and see something similar yourself
with your own eyes the first time, for me, it was a priest in a museum,


Are the compositions in museums completely random or do you compose the scene once you have identified the subject and situation?
Both happen but the first is pure creative pleasure, the second way is a bit
more of a standard work, kind of. :)
Once you have taken the shot, do you show it to the subject immortalized? If so, what reactions does it provoke?

Out of the 3100 photographs now I’ve only shown it to 3 people. Once I regretted as I saw „the subject“ and her friends (I originally wanted to photograph ) standing afterwards outside the museum in winter as I really wanted to compliment her for her/their style but I was too tired, it was a group smoking cigarettes on a cold dark Berlin January day, but had no energy left.
 If I’m on vernissages/gallery openings I often take people matching artworks shots en passant, and show them around my friends/colleagues if
they are good or even point to the situation before I take the shot, post them on social media but don’t show the photographed and I usually keep the separation of institutional museums only and some Street Art in the
series...
I took a fantastic shot (Lion head with blue eyes/ Gericault & in front a woman with a shirt with a Lion head with blue eyes and I advanced/ dared a new depth of sharpness) in my heydays in the Louvre in Paris 2018, in the afternoon before my book launch in a Photogallery so a lot to do...I showed the photograph maybe to 5-10 different people all asking me the
same question :), one at the book signing who I talked to was a psychologist from Venezuela with a friend. In the end the memory card malfunctioned and 4 days of Paris photography were lost,
only 2 shots from that trip were saved (not that one!), it went dark in my head for 2 weeks and I mourned a long time...but that’s also a reason to
not show the raw files because they need to be saved and ideally also fine art printed, then I know it has some independent life and has a chance to survive..
Just last week I showed a photograph I took of her in 2019 to a lady
painting in front of a Frans Hals, and she first thought I just took it now but then realized it was then, she loved it, I sent it to her, we once shared the same way through Tiergarten where I portrayed her in front of the
Swiss embassy as she’s Swiss, living in London for more than 50 years and travels by train mostly for painting once in a while...she hasn’t been to Berlin since 2019, was a teacher of art who had to earn her studies so this is great to see people dedicated to beautiful art again! And she told me without knowing this kind of photography I do that they recently went to Kunsthaus Zurich and took a photo of a guy there matching, her husband
sent it to me via e-mail from London (they are both over 70 years old I guess).
 I also showed the shoot to this couple that was so in love they filled the whole room with warmth, and they loved it.


Would you like to tell us about the Bicycle Culture series?

I’d say I cycled into the arts :) .ARTE Metropolis once said it in a quite nice sentence: „He turns damaged cars into artworks“
I was twice overturned by a car on my bicycle, I had priority, both hit-and- runs, I had to go to the hospital to check one time...
The destructiveness of cars is exorbitant, they conquered everything and are death machines, think of the danger, the noise, the tyre wear, the velocity, the resources it took to build, the space, the exhaust...I never made and never wanted to make the driver’s license somehow, I walk,
cycle, swim, and take the public transport, since 2023 I made more than 35000 km through Europe by train (I’m flight free since 2020 due to
ecological reasons as well as vegetarian for far longer- basically I find the western lifestyle to reckless, I lived it too, plus humans doubled during my
lifetime, so I try to promote a more sustainable lifestyle by living it, and with the bicycle by trying to promote it as one of the best inventions ever
made, as the world has to fight for survival, as Stiglitz expressed five years
ago „The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response“ I know these are not nice talking topics and/or exhausting, so for me photography as an expression is more quiet, and I try to get some message
out there without making too much noise and being too unfunny...
The series of more than 500 photographs consists not only of photographs with car wrecks, but also in oceans, lakes, rivers, snow, hills, mountains, on statue buckets, trees, tanks, even a plane...my highlight was standing
with my bicycle on a wrecked Ferrari in 2021 (I use those arrogant poses like those cruel safari hunters and change the perspective from victim to perpetrator, cars are the right of the strongest)
In reality I find the only good politics happen in Paris by Anne Hidalgo and David Belliard, huge compliments.

 How do you think your art could evolve in the future? What projects do you have in mind?

I trave tried for years to get a stipend or residency from Rome to New York
with thoughts about the rest of the world as I’d love to work and live in
some other places again...I need new inputs, also I have nothing against
living in France or Italy for longer...
In Rome f.e. i’d like to take a photograph with either my bicycle or
„Reading Petronius“ on the roof of the Pantheon, so if Dott. Luca Mercuri,
Direttore del Pantheon (at least in 2020 when I last tried) reads this, he
changes his mind?
I’d like to photograph in at least 50 Italian cities.
I certainly want at a certain time to see the blue chaperon from the Van Eyck painting in the Brukenthal-Museum in Sibiu / Romania. I have a crush on various details from various artists :)

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