About the Artist
Josef Volsa is an Austrian photographic artist based in Vienna. Under the name Artis Umbrae, he has been developing an ongoing photographic body of work since 2025 in which the human body, shadow, writing and language merge into a distinctive visual world. His photographs are created predominantly in black and white and conceived as interconnected series. Works by Josef Volsa have already been presented publicly on several occasions: in a group exhibition and a solo exhibition at Red Carpet in Vienna. He publishes his photographic works and accompanying texts on artisumbrae.art.
For Josef Volsa, photography is not a means of depicting reality as completely as possible. It serves to distil reality into the body, form, gesture, shadow and those few signs necessary for an image to reach beyond what is immediately visible. The aesthetic roots of Artis Umbrae lie primarily in the photography of Art Deco and the interwar period. Artists such as František Drtikol are not treated as models to be imitated, but as historical interlocutors. Their explorations of the body, light, shadow and geometric form are taken up, questioned and continued through the possibilities of contemporary photography.
The initial impulse for a new series may come from art history, literature or music, but equally from social developments or inconspicuous observations of everyday life. A song on the radio, an old fan, a ceramic tile, a historical narrative or a casually observed posture may mark the beginning of a series. What matters is not where the impulse originates, but whether it creates resonance. An idea is translated into photography only when it reaches beyond its original occasion and demands a visual language of its own. Inspiration, therefore, does not mean waiting for an idea to arrive. It means being attentive enough to recognise it – and critical enough not to mistake every idea for art.
The human body lies at the centre of the work. Through the deliberate reduction of clothing, colour, elaborate props and narrative settings, it is released from unambiguous temporal and social associations. Clothing speaks of period, social position, taste and role. The unclothed body, by contrast, can become a bearer of tension, memory, vulnerability, resistance and symbolic meaning. Within Artis Umbrae, nudity therefore serves neither provocation nor erotic display. It is part of a deliberate concentration on the human being and the body’s expressive capacity.
A defining characteristic of the work is the use of hard, precisely positioned light. In photography, one commonly speaks of lighting or the setting of light – the deliberate positioning and direction of light within an image. Josef Volsa reverses this familiar perspective and understands his approach primarily as the setting of shadow. Shadow is not merely the absence of light, nor is it a technical by-product. It models the body, separates the visible from the concealed and creates those spaces in which the viewer’s imagination can become active. Not everything that gives an image meaning must be shown in full. At times, its actual effect begins precisely where visible information ends.
Writing plays an equally essential role. It is not subsequently placed over the photograph as a graphic ornament, but is frequently written directly onto the body, becoming part of the photographed reality. Josef Volsa consciously draws upon almost two thousand years of European writing history. Historical scripts such as Capitalis Rustica, Uncial, Textura Quadrata, Bastarda and Kurrent each possess their own rhythm, cultural background and emotional effect. Their selection is therefore never governed solely by legibility or formal beauty. The written word and the shape of its letters form a shared level of meaning. It is not only the word that speaks to the viewer, but also the form in which it appears.
The recurring use of Latin terms and short Latin texts is also part of this engagement with language. Latin is not used to display historical erudition or to lend the images an artificial solemnity. It removes individual words from the rapid flow of everyday speech and slows down their perception. A Latin term is less likely to be read in passing; it must be looked at, spoken and perhaps even researched. Language thereby acquires a physical and visual presence while opening a space for personal memories, associations and emotions.
Within Artis Umbrae, reduction does not mean simplification, but concentration. Every consciously omitted element creates space for what is intended to remain and take effect within the image. The pursuit of timelessness is likewise not a stylistic decision imposed afterwards, but a consequence of this approach. When fashionable, time-bound and purely decorative elements disappear, the image can move beyond the immediate moment of its creation.
Artis Umbrae does not seek primarily to explain, but to affect. The photographs are intended to evoke memories, resistance, questions and personal associations. Aesthetics is never an end in itself. Beauty may open a path into a work, but it should not smooth away its contradictions. The same body, the same gesture and the same shadow may be perceived entirely differently by different people. The work is therefore not completed in the studio alone, but is continually renewed in the gaze of its viewers.
The individual photographs are conceived as parts of larger series. Each series develops its own internal order, symbolism and rhythm. Artis Umbrae is therefore not a loose collection of individual photographs, but a growing body of work in which historical visual languages, contemporary experiences and personal perception enter into dialogue.
Not everything that takes effect within an image has to be visible.