Erik Pawassar

Persephone VI - large format photograph of a timeless environmental still

2006

Erik Pawassar was born in Bielefeld, Germany in 1968. His work focuses on the beauty of the disregarded or mundane object. The subjects for his striking and captivating visuals are typically set in the most ordinary environments, drawing the viewer into a charged but serene experience based on composition, palette and formal lines. Saturated in color, the nominal subjects gather a haunting and mesmerizing quality, creating a poignant pretext for the making of a formal color photograph. Decisively capturing the traces left by humanity, Pawassar's images are filled with a sense of universal nostalgia and pay homage to the passage of time and the extinguished moment, referencing documentary and street photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastian Salgado, Raghubir Singh and Edward Burtynsky as early influences. Pawassar's profession as a highly sought­-after digital re­toucher informs his images with a heightened sensitivity to color and a discerning sense of detail - but while his daily work revolves around impeccably retouched compositions and flawless digital refineries, Pawassar's artwork is created exclusively in-camera, He currently lives and works in San Francisco.