Cora Pongracz, one of the most important Austrian photographers of her generation, died unexpectedly in September 2003. Pongracz’s work can be seen as foreshadowing the developments that contemporary conceptual photography has employed so successfully in its portrayal of people. The individual photographs and series in which Pongracz documented people from her circle of acquaintances contain, in a subtle and brilliant way, those aspects that have been at the forefront of the interinfluential discourses on subject theory and art over the past two decades: the questions of the pose and of the performative. The title »Erweiterte Portraits« (»Extended Portraits«) that she gave to one of her series reflects the theme of fragmented identities or of the equivocal relationship between private and public. Pongracz photographed eight women from among her friends, asking each of the portraitees to name additional photographic motifs that she wanted as an »extension« of herself.

Cora Pongracz did not stage-manage either her subjects or the camera, however. What she did do was to build up a sensitive field in which, with great professionalism, she brought to bear her critical gaze, touched with irony and melancholy, which mediates between photography, the photographer and the photographed. Reinhard Priessnitz (1945-1985), with whom she was married, gave this succinct description of her approach in the catalogue issued for her exhibition »verwechslungen« (»confusions of identity«) (1978): »when, in her series and individual photographs, cora pongracz has composed portraits in which she marked out a frame for herself by terming them ironic self-representation, she encourages, exemplarily in her way, a change in receptive approach. in several ways, she breaks up the identificatory references that are commonly postulated in photography, thus opening up to our awareness aspects that we must use to work out whether they are to be seen as identical with the model from one intention, or because our intention would like this to be the case.«1

Cora Pongracz directed her apparatus at her photographic subjects with sensitive objectivity, yet with presence, entering into a kind of unconscious, performative dialogue with them – Ferdinand Schmatz calls it »intuitive conceptualization«2 – in which she succeeded in undermining the convention of the projective power of the camera that produces the pose as always having been anticipated. With Pongracz, »Verwechslung« means both method and metaphor.

The individual portraits and series by Cora Pongracz are not only lasting witnesses to her great photographic skill: they also represent an important and valuable record of the Austrian art scene at the close of the 20th century. From the late sixties, she photographed the Viennese art, film and literature scene and its offshoots; during the past two decades, her subjects were predominantly people from her private sphere.

In 1972, Pongracz published the »Photogeschichte Martha Jungwirth – Franz Ringel«; 1974 saw the publication of the book »8 erweiterte portraits« (8 extended portraits)3; and in 1978 the catalogue »verwechslungen« appeared in the Galerie nächst St. Stephan, in which she exhibited several times. Owing to illness, she led a retired existence during the last two decades, but remained artistically active up until her sudden death.

In the nineties, the Galerie Fotohof (Rainer Iglar and Michael Mauracher) and the author of this obituary joined forces to bring her archive, which until then had been left untended, to the Fotohof, where it was put in order and stored under appropriate conditions. This professional supervision made it possible to put works by Pongracz on public display once more in representative solo and group exhibitions: for example, in the Galerie Fotohof in 1997, in the Galerie Camera Austria in Graz in 1998, in the Galerie Steineck in Vienna in 1998 and 2001, and in the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck in 2000. The publication »Cora Pongracz – Fotografie«4, a joint publication by the Galerie Fotohof and the Galerie im Taxispalais, which contains a comprehensive cross-section of her works, texts by Reinhard Priessnitz, Maren Richter and Ferdinand Schmatz, a biography, and a bibliography, was published in 2001, at the same time as Cora Pongracz was awarded the Austrian »Würdigungspreis« (Recognition Award) for photography.

Cora Pongracz’s work, which has yet to be subjected to proper academic research, is not only of great importance for the history of art and photography in Austria; Pongracz was able to provide a complex portrayal of a period of Austrian cultural history.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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