Dieter Appelt is chiefly known as a photographer, but he has also created films, videos, sculptures and performances. In the mid 50s, he studied music and singing in Leipzig. He began taking photographs when he moved from East to West Berlin in 1959, with a strong preference for experimentation and under the influence of the innovative German photographer, Heinz Hajek-Halke. He was also linked to the choir of the Berlin Opera for a long period. Following the construction of the Berlin Wall, the 60s saw the establishment of various experimental artistic groupings such as Fluxus and the entourage around Joseph Beuys. Although Appelt was never himself part of these, they did serve as a source of inspiration. In the same period, the artist made a long trip to Japan, where he became fascinated by Zen Buddism, with its emphasis on internalisation as a starting point for finding the ultimate balance between body and mind.
It was only in 1973 that Appelt first showed a series of experimental photos, in which he struck suffocating poses against a glass wall with the camera positioned behind it. Two motifs from Appelt’s oeuvre were instantly enshrined in this series: the use of his own body, and the illusion of multiple spatial dimensions in a two-dimensional photographic image. Between 1975 and 1985, the artist focused on the ‘sculptural’ use of the photographic medium. In theatrical acts, he used his body – often ‘treated’ with natural materials such as plaster and wood – to explore the human desire for transcendence. Appel was appointed Professor of Film, Video and Photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Berlin in 1982. His work became more conceptual and he exposed objects to two of the fundamental pillars of photography: light and movement. In these works, he stopped using the camera as the ‘author’ and merely allowed it to impassively record. Partly inspired by the Futurists, Appelt created photographic works comprised of multiple images for the first time. Movement, time and three-dimensionality all take centre stage in these works as a reaction to the ‘omnipotence’ of the two-dimensional, still photographic image. In the early 90s, Appelt reverted to his photography from the 70s, in which he used his body as a tool. He reinterpreted various older works, thereby deploying the conceptual techniques that he had mastered in the 80s.
