++++ The trainer on the lawn holds up the Molotov cocktail with a demonstrative, extolling gesture, as if it were a product from the hobby bar. The people standing around do not look at all like street fighters. They are wearing anoraks and pull sceptical faces, and in their leisure time they certainly pursue interests other than taking cover behind cars.
But that is precisely what they are learning in the camp at which Bruno Serralongue took his photos. To find out the advantages of wearing bullet-proof vests, to distinguish firearms from one another, to quickly apply first-aid to shot wounds — Bruno Serralongue has photographed photo journalists during their training to become war photographers. The French Manifesta artist, who was born in 1968, proceeds from the question concerning what photographers expect from their presence at critical locations. In the photos, a noticeable tension arises between what they learn in this course and what could actually happen. In the ideal case, such a training course covers all the eventualities which subsequently will never really occur. In the worst case, on the other hand, they could suddenly find themselves in the middle of cross-fire and notice that it is something quite different from attending a course about it.
In themselves, the photos are not very exciting and are photographed in an almost amateurish way. The focus, composition and lighting do not play a very important part in the artistic photographic work of Bruno Serralongue. He himself is only an observer of a process which indeed involves tension and crisis. What would happen if you did not find the trenches in the forest as quickly as here in the training course? How can you cross a street quickly and under cover with a camera? And what is the relationship on the whole between personal commitment and the results to be expected? The central question in Serralongue's series of 25 photos is what the producer of the pictures expects from their own immediate presence. "A possible answer would be that you do not necessarily expect a picture," he says. "Paradoxically, my work is located precisely in this uncertainty."
Frankfurter Kunstverein, Am Römerberg, until 25 August. hoh