… The hanger could also be the love
the bells could also be the flowers
the pants could be a chair
the boots could be replaced by shit.
My theme is man and his life, nature. Sometimes I work on everything at the same time, sometimes on one theme more precisely: to get especially close to the physical existence. The reference to nature can not be drastic enough to show its sensitivity (transience). I, too, must protect myself from my vulnerability.
Every time knows its limits of the sayable. To reach the limit of what can be said, one must have the intention to do it. To have the pain and happiness of this world before my eyes and in my heart, to be able to say it, to develop feelings for things, to express them in a controlled and precise way. I still have to lose control; to get beyond the images that are already accepted at the moment. I have to be ahead of the curve. To show things that may be even more beautiful and even uglier.
To talk about the things that really make up life: the growing, the blossoming, the fruits, the cold, the love; the killing and the being killed; to be able to kill oneself; to be able to look everywhere. And only to tell “yes no boring stories of glorious days”.
My life is that of an observer of the surface of the ephemeral. If there is something to see on the surface, that is enough for me. The blue of the sky, the dirty snow in winter, the tears on a cheek. I want to say something in my own way. The sky, the winter, the tears are examples that I have something to say; something for which it is worth looking for a form, thinking about what is to be represented, and learning something from the result . . .
Manfred Willmann, from: 1st Munich Photo Symposium,
Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1985