Perhaps the valued reader has already encountered my handwriting in various entries within these Cogitationes. Whether in guestbook entries at galleries, notes written during exhibition visits, or directly within photographic works such as Corpus Scriptum I & II or the series Sub Rosa, writing appears again and again throughout my work. Not by accident, not merely as decoration, and certainly not only as a vehicle for information. It has accompanied me for many years and has long since become part of the inner world from which my photographic work also emerges.
At the very beginning, however, I should clarify something: I am not a calligrapher. At least not in the true sense of the word. I do not possess the technical virtuosity or the decades of disciplined perfection that define genuine masters of calligraphy. And yet writing probably occupies my thoughts more intensely than it does for many people who write far more beautifully than I ever could. What interests me is not merely technical mastery, but the atmosphere of historical scripts, their cultural depth, and the way they affect human perception.
The origin of this fascination lies far in the past and initially had nothing to do with photography at all. I am an amateur historian. Old books, historical documents, letters, and archival materials have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. Anyone who works seriously with historical sources quickly encounters a problem: very often, one simply cannot read them anymore. Not because the language itself has disappeared, but because the script has. Entire centuries of European writing culture suddenly become visually inaccessible to the modern eye.
This was where my engagement with historical scripts truly began. At first, I simply wanted to decipher them. But as so often happens, prolonged observation eventually creates the desire to move deeper. Reading gradually became writing. And what began as historical curiosity slowly evolved into a profound fascination with script as a cultural form.
Because writing is never neutral.
It conveys far more than information alone. It carries within itself a sense of time, rhythm, attitude, and culture. A medieval Kurrent script evokes something entirely different from Roman Capitalis Rustica. English cursive handwriting tells a different story than a contemporary digital font. Even people unfamiliar with the historical background usually sense these differences immediately. Script creates atmosphere long before its content is consciously understood.
Perhaps this is also why handwriting attracts attention so strongly. I have experienced it repeatedly over the years. The moment I begin to write, the atmosphere in a room often changes. Conversations pause. Eyes wander toward the paper or the flipchart. What initially feels to me like a simple tool seems to become something independent for others almost immediately.
One particular moment remains vivid in my memory. I was invited to give the opening speech for the exhibition of one of my models. While the guests were still engaged in conversation, I quietly began writing on the flipchart. Without saying a word. The brush pen moved slowly across the paper, letter after letter emerging visibly before the audience, and gradually the room fell silent. When I finally turned around, everyone was looking toward the front. It was not my spoken words that had captured attention, but the visible act of writing itself.
I experience something similar to this day in restaurants or hotels. When I am deeply impressed by the cuisine or service, I sometimes leave a handwritten compliment on a napkin. Years later, during another visit, I am occasionally recognized — and not rarely, that very napkin is brought back out from a drawer somewhere. Sometimes slightly wrinkled, sometimes laminated, sometimes pinned to a board in the kitchen. I find that deeply moving every time it happens. Because in those moments it becomes clear that writing can be far more than mere communication. It leaves traces. It carries memory.
Perhaps this also reflects a certain longing of our present age. We live in a time of almost entirely dematerialized writing. Text appears on screens, vanishes again, is copied, moved, deleted, and flattened into thousands of identical fonts. Handwriting, by contrast, retains resistance. It reveals time, rhythm, movement, and the physical presence of the person behind it. It is never entirely neutral.
And perhaps that is precisely why writing gradually began entering my photographic work as well.
At first rather cautiously. In the series Corpus Scriptum I and Corpus Scriptum II, I used Kurrent — a historical cursive script once widely used throughout the German-speaking world for centuries. Today it appears almost ghostlike to many viewers because it feels simultaneously familiar and unreadable. Its lines possess something organic, flowing, almost bodily. It does not feel constructed, but grown. On human skin especially, it created a peculiar tension between corporeality and script.
Later, in Sub Rosa, I consciously shifted toward Capitalis Rustica. And with that change, the entire atmosphere of the images transformed. The script became harder, more monumental, more archaic. It no longer resembled personal handwriting, but something closer to inscription. Almost as though it belonged carved into stone and had only temporarily appeared upon the body.
It was precisely this contrast that fascinated me most. The transience of the human body encounters a script form that has existed for nearly two thousand years. Something fleeting suddenly carries something enduring. The skin becomes the temporary bearer of a cultural form that has survived centuries.
At no point was this intended as body painting or decorative effect. The script was never meant to function as ornament. It had to become part of the visual language itself. Trace. Inscription. Mark. Something almost archaeological.
And perhaps this is ultimately why historical scripts continue to fascinate me so deeply. I find it strangely tragic that we possess over two thousand years of writing history — and yet behave as though writing today consisted almost exclusively of standardized digital fonts.
In architecture, music, or painting, the use of historical forms appears entirely natural to us. No one would seriously claim that only contemporary forms are legitimate. Yet when it comes to script, this assumption often emerges surprisingly quickly. And yet historical writing forms continue to shape our perception, even when we no longer know their names.
What interests me here is not nostalgia. I do not wish to recreate a historical world. Rather, I believe these forms deserve to remain alive. To continue being used. To remain visible. Cultural forms do not disappear only when they are destroyed. Often they vanish simply because nobody uses them anymore.
Perhaps this is also where my fascination with script connects most deeply with my photographic work. Because photographically, too, I consciously work within a visual tradition that often reaches back more than a century. The lighting, shadows, and atmosphere of my images remain deeply connected to traditions still visible in photographers such as František Drtikol or George Hurrell. The handwriting is ultimately only a continuation of the same inner movement through different means.
Both resist the present age in their own way. Not out of rejection of the new, but out of the conviction that depth often emerges where time itself remains visible.
Perhaps that is why my handwriting has become more than mere writing.
Perhaps it is a way of thinking visibly.