Spinatsch had no way of knowing what he would discover. The cameras were indiscriminate, indifferent to framing and composition, gesture and expression, motion and moments. “He uses a surveillance-style approach similar to that of the tourism industry, the police or public transport companies,” says Joerg Bader, director of the Centre de la Photographie Genève. “Yet his aim is not to monitor people, but rather to reverse the pictorial hierarchies and criteria. What is recorded by the camera is determined by a computer program, not the photographer. It means that we end up seeing unexpected details and moments overlooked by the lenses of the mass media, who principally cover these events.”
He gives us each of these images in their entirety before offering, in a second volume of the book, an edit. Volume II is entitled 71 Photographs, a selection of moments from the evening; some are random washes of colour – a bouquet of flowers, the creased flash of a dress, an ornate cornice. Others are strangely candid; a caught and suspended glance, or a moment of hidden drama – envious, sexual and desirous, vague, anxious, concerned.
The Vienna Opera Ball is not really about an opera. It’s about the willingness to see, and be seen, by an imagined peerage. But there’s a distinction between the opera Spinatsch has captured and the founding operas of the late 19th century, for cameras are among the audience too. They are photographing each other, using their device as an aristocrat would use a pair of pocket binoculars.
“They are photographing each other,” Campany writes, “to remind themselves that this dream world, this orgy of power bonding, is happening, and they are a part of it. But what is extended is the symbolic reach of the event, beyond physical walls and into the virtualised space of telecommunications and the internet. The ball is nothing without its travelling image proxies.”
See more of Spinatsch’ work here.
Stay up to date with stories such as this, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
