Pinboys

The standing figures, their verticality, is the point of departure from which the visual idea emerges. The composition is based on a tension between the verticals of the individual figures and the development of an overall configuration in the horizontal. This basic compositional pattern led Werner Berg to actively seek out events that involve the meeting of multiple standing figures: bowlers, curlers on the ice, men lighting fireworks, people waiting.

In this image from a fair at night, the lane’s artificial lighting throws shadows of the figures and pins onto the plank fence shining in the darkness. At Lower Carinthia’s fairs and festivals, the bowlers played outdoors on clay lanes. The pinboys, who had the job of setting up the pins and rolling the balls back to the players, stood or sat by the plank fences at the lanes’ end.