The Perfect Crime: Concerning the Murder of Reality
Jan A. Staiger and Malte Uchtmann
Kult Books
English and German
Softcover
Edition of 1000
Elastic band closure
213 pages
160 × 290 mm
2024
ISBN 9789198760729
Germany is a crime fiction country. If wanted, fictional murder and manslaughter can be witnessed many times a day throughout the main television networks. There are more than 238 crime series available on Germany’s six largest broadcasting channels. Based on the overrepresentation of fictional murder on German television, ‘The Perfect Crime’ investigates the effect of crime series on our perception and behaviour. The work examines the use of imaging techniques within police work and its epistemic implications, as well as the question of how fictional narratives change our perception of reality.
The work combines several photographic techniques and approaches: Staiger and Uchtmann have made photographs on the film sets of German crime series, overstaging scenes, leading to an abstraction of what is depicted, contrasted with supposedly authentic imagery of corpses and crime scenes. In the portrait series, various actors, who played victims and perpetrators in German crime series, have been altered by artificial intelligence to create new possible versions of them, linked to the creation of phantom images in real police work. Furthermore, locations that have served as a movie set for a fictional crime scene are documented as 3D reconstructions via photogrammetric methods.
(Source: https://kultbooks.com/books/the-perfect-crime)
About the Artist
Jan A. Staiger (*1995) is a German photographer based in Brussels (BEL). He has been engaged with exploring the intersection of aesthetics and power, focusing on how visual depictions shape and reflect societal interpretive authority. His photographic work often delves into ways in which visual narratives serve both as a medium for and a manifestation of power dynamics within society.
https://janstaiger.com
(Source: https://janstaiger.com/infos-en)
Malte Uchtmann (*1996 in Hamburg) is a photographer and media artist based in Leipzig, Germany. Using various visual media, he is interested in the construction of reality through documentary image strategies and examines how systems of knowledge, order and representation shape our perception and behaviour.
https://www.malteuchtmann.com
(Source: https://www.malteuchtmann.com/about)
About the Publisher
Kult Books is an independent publishing project for photography and other lens-based visual arts founded by Janne Riikonen in Stockholm, Sweden. Kult Books publishes monographs and artist books that embrace a personal artistic vision and visual language. The publications are created in close collaboration with the artists, the physical form designed to support the concept of the work.
https://kultbooks.com
(Source: https://kultbooks.com/about)
