THE RED BAG
Concept. Object. Photos.
HANS FLEISCHNER
#2
Hot damn. Your red bag book is sensational, a kind of summing up of the many photographic strategies I saw in your other books and with a very vivid human element despite the dark premise behind it. (I’m so sick of this deranged world we find ourselves trapped in.) I hope you have the chance to display the images in a show if you haven’t already. I would really like Maurizio to see the Red Bag book. Can I alert him that you will send it? John Laudenslager. We go back to early 1980s, while both living in Tokyo. He is now living in New York and we have been in touch over all these years.
Tuesday 26 September Thank you for sharing this spectacular piece of art with me, Hans! it is 2:11am and I lie awake in Lagos, somehow sleep eluded me. Then I remembered I was meant to check your book out. And so it begins…I flip the first page and I could not stop till I reached page 252. I try to imagine some future being on the planet one hundred years from now coming across this book which spanned 25years* and trying to make sense of the lived experiences of those humans of the 21st century … Each page poetically illustrates an object travelling through time and space, encountering people performing life, landscapes orchestrating life and every other show of life in between what is it? …You asked
it may be the omnipresent- that which is everywhere and sees everything and sometimes inserts itself in existence and makes life and memories, to each it appears different, each one using it differently, and to some it is the sum of our existence… Congratulations Hans Thank you Jumoke. There will be several books of The Red Bag coming up. May I use this text in the next book about The Red Bag. I think we will meet before that happens, but I want you to know how much I appreciate what you wrote. Thanks again and talk to you soon. Cheers and hope you got enough sleep to keep on swinging. All the best, Hans Good morning Hans! Yes please! Do go ahead and use the text as you deem fit, it is a gift to you. I did manage to catch some sleep but not the recommended 7-8hrs, I’d be sure to
compensate with a little nap in the course of the day. Have a lovely day and see you soon. Jumoke Sanwo, Lagos, Nigeria, 2023. *Small correction. The story of The Red Bag at the time of this writing goes back 25 years. The Book #1 is a collection of images from the first couple of years.
RE-INTRODUCING THE RED BAG.
Afterword is Preview of The Red Bag #3.
Hans Fleischner, Vienna 2023, December.