In “Trugschluss” (Fallacy) the chopped fish head,neatly arranged on a silver plate, seems to have
entrapped a dragonfly. Schreiber humorously
investigates the basic tragedy of life in order to
express the ambiguity of the immanent conflict
between life and death and the impossibility of
solving it. The objects in the photographic images
become something else and stop us just at the
moment of transformation. In “Zufriedener Klon”
(“Content Clone”), Schreiber shows a pumpkin
between two half-filled water glasses. The
arrangement emerges against a dark background
and reminds of Dutch chiaroscuro. As in former
centuries, his still lifes reflect the customs, ideas
and aspirations of our time. They give us valuable
insights into changes of mentality and philosophy
as well as people’s notion of death.The pumpkin is
hardly recognizable and becomes an organic form
of human flesh. Are the glasses half-full or half-
empty? Or do they allude to identical twins? The
pitiful transience of life on earth, humanity’s age-old
battle against mortality seems to reach a new epoch
with the possibility of cloning. Huxley’s “Brave New
World” anticipated reproductive technology and
builds on the idea of Henry Ford's assembly line -
mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and
consumption of disposable consumer goods.
Consumerism is already here as the manufactured
products in Schreiber’s images display, but what
will it be like when our DNA is spliced and edited
for the procurement of life-long bliss and sustained
ecstasy-- who knows? In the meantime, we just
act out variations on the dramas scripted by selfish
fears of mortality. In the sonnets of Shakespeare,
the final couplet provides us with some hope that
there is something about mankind that will ultimately
resist and defeat time – poetry and the human soul.