87 Days of Blue

Log of a Round-the-world Voyage
by Peter Schanz

© Peter Schanz / bildkultur 2001

The exhibition

87 Days of Blue

Log of a Round-the-world Voyage by Peter Schanz

"And why do you do this, anyway?" –
"Because I want to know if it really is round."

In Rotterdam, Peter Schanz boards a ship. It delivers containers and, as its owner assures him, will voyage westward until it returns to the east. He lives 87 days on this ship, alone with the goal, in his own words, "just once, to circle the globe, just once to arrive at the end. To let myself fall out of time. And to see if something catches me."

Each day, Peter Schanz documented the seemingly unchanging. At noon, he would set up the camera over the water passing the railing. The result is 86 water portraits – one day is missing by having passed over the International Date Line – each precisely specified with cartographical references and each completely different. As a set it is a blue band stretching once around the earth. And with these, his travel diary; short texts, usually of less than 10 lines per day, each with its own tone – the pithy, wide-eyed tone of a world traveller who "discovers everyday life on the water through the eyes of a landlubber casting new perspectives on his earthly views along the way." (Andreas Berger).

Bildkultur presents the photos of this trip as an exhibition through which the viewer can discover the unique in the seemingly routine, reawakening the senses.

bildkultur presents the series 87 Days of Blue
as an exhibition:

87 Days of Blue – 'water portraits'

86 Fine-Art Digital Prints,
image-size 150 x 150 mm
Giclée-Printing on watercolour-paper;
size 400 x 500 mm
with chronological and cartographical references

The artist

Peter Schanz

Peter Schanz was born in Bamberg, Germany. He studied German literature, history and political science in Würzburg, Graz and Munich. Since 1984 he worked as a dramatic advisor and director at various German theatres, from1997–1999 as artistic director at the 'Staatstheater Braunschweig'.

Since 1999 he has worked as a free-lance author and dramatic advisor.
www.peterschanz.de >>