The photographic works by Mirko Martin tell stories and show scenes and the big city themes that seem familiar to us. Martin plays with these familiar motifs, juxtaposing them like episodes in a film. They give the impression of being stills, initially confirming our cliché thinking about Los Angeles and the West Coast of the USA.
But this is only the first way these photos, which are drawn from both film sets and real events, can be read. Through the pictorial concentration of events and the subsequent compilation of the pictures, it is impossible to distinguish between truth and fiction. In the work of the artist, the two levels interpenetrate with such self-evidence and so imperceptibly that the observer cannot avoid asking, as Mirko Martin puts it, “what sort of truth can be learned from the photographs.”
