Third Year: Art, destruction, memories and ephemera

I am interested in the way in which Gerhard Richter created a vast number of ‘overpainted’ photographs.  These are categorised into groups such as ‘self portraits’ and ‘family’.  Each colour photograph has been overpainted with oil paint, and simply titled using a date.  The subject of the photograph is juxtaposed with abstract paint gestures.  By painting over a photograph, Richter almost defaces the original image and obscures the meaning by giving it a new narrative.  The boundaries between painting and photography are blurred, the photograph becomes a surface on which paint can be applied.  Photographs which did not make it into the photo album were repurposed and transformed into a mixed media piece of art.