With one of its latest acquisitions, the Viehof Collection is adding photography to its list of artists. Since 2006, Düsseldorf-based artist Sebastian Riemer has repeatedly developed series that thematize, illuminate and question the documentary claim of photography. In his Press Paintings series, the artist deals with historical photos from press agencies that were mostly retouched with the help of paint in the analog age. The originals he selects in a lengthy search process are meticulously analyzed and individually edited. The intervention does not take place in the motif itself. Through the high-resolution enlargement, which leads to a shift in perception and detachment from the original context, coincidences are emphasized and new approaches are generated.

Riemer explains: "It is really importand to me to show the materiality and the signs of age of the prints very clearly so I use the photographic prozcess to make this visible by enlargement. But I also want to give back a kind of dignity to the photographed persons ans subject matters that hat been altered in so many ways. Some of them were altered cruelly on the pictorial level. So, I often choose a size that is very close to life-size of the depiction, emphasising the gap between the image content of the vintage prints and the partial new image content of the unintended parts (the retouching ans signs of ageing) Also the sometimes very arrucate miniature retouching looks "clumsier" in enlargement, suggesting the bold brush strokes form the field of fine art rather than the origin as applied craft. Moreover, I like to look at this process of stark entlargement like unearthing peudo frescos from an ancient time of image making. Size really makes the differences here."

Sebastian Riemer in conversation with David Campany, in: Sebastian Riemer, Press Paintings, p. 283