Photography has advanced in leaps and bounds since its discovery in the early 19th century. Today, nearly every mobile phone comes with an integrated camera, and digital technology generates a never-ending flood of images. Many photographers who work in the field of art photography also take advantage of the manifold opportunities offered by the further development of the medium. But as always, there are people who prefer not to follow the current trend and find their own ways to express their creativity. 

In the field of photography, there are a large number of artists who realise their unusual concepts and ideas using a pinhole camera. Their work shows that this form of camera is not just a dusty old relic of photographic history, but that it holds almost unlimited artistic potential that can be used in a wide variety of ways.  Here one should underline an aspect that is especially important for Hölscher’s artistic work–the possibility of creating pictures with almost any object that can be sealed to exclude light. 

Independently of the aesthetic and subject of the image, this camera gives rise to multi-layered works whose relevance is based not only on what the photograph actually represents, but on the origin and nature of the camera itself. In this way, a scenic landscape suddenly acquires a political dimension when we realise that the picture was taken using an Albanian bunker from the socialist era of Enver Hoxha. Apart from the question of what a photograph is finally meant to portray, other conceptual dimensions open up beyond the purely visual. It is these dimensions that constantly new artistic works aim to capture.

For the “Road to the stock exchange” project, five mailing boxes were converted to pinhole cameras and sent from BRAIN’s headquarters in Zwingenberg to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The camera aperture was opened when the box was dispatched, and closed again by the recipient. The parcels thus document their own journey, i.e. the “road to the stock exchange” from Zwingenberg to Frankfurt in just one picture. The series offers an artistic take on BRAIN’s successful IPO. The pictures in this series were not only used for this photo spread. The cover picture of this issue of BLICKWINKEL was also reproduced in a limited edition of 300 items, framed and signed by the artist. On 9 February 2016, to coincide with the floating of the BRAIN share on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, BRAIN’s Management Board sent the framed picture as a “thank you” to all staff of the BRAIN Group and to everyone involved in realising the IPO.