On the Visibility of the Invisible in Michael Michlmayrs photography series View-Finder

by Carl Aigner 1996 

…In this way Michael Michlmayr reflects not only the instrumental aspect of a camera and the status of the photographic picture, but at the same time also the view of the photographic apparatus and its medial refraction. The refraction of the light in the photographic optics becomes a refraction of the view in the act of looking. The theme of this work is not the view of something by means of photographic pictures, but the act of looking into both the photograph and the photographic instrument. However, the moment of perception is to be found not only in the act of looking but also in the change in the status of that act; it is no longer simply directed towards the visible as such, but seeks to show the non-visible in the process of transformation: vision, that which one would be unable to see here if one did not have the visual instrument of photography, if the photograph did not indicate another picture, which in its turn indicates an absent picture (and not simply the pictorial presence of a referential absence)…..