PUTZ

This is a project (2011 – ongoing) in which I have photographed 8 different families in 5 different cities (Vienna, New York, London, Paris and Berlin). I question the strategies and intentions of photographing someone, and the possibilities of working against an invasion of privacy in a time of complete overflow of images. I am interested in examining the notion of ‘posing’ , the need to perform in the age of social networking and permanent surveillance. I wanted to create works that transport a feeling of intimacy and closeness with the self for the subject (and the viewer) but without exposing anyone. I started photographing some of my friends who had just had their first babies in 2011, and I found the act of photographing someone with their child to be an inherently different experience. Not only due to the fact that the young mothers are in an in-between and often vulnerable state of adjusting to their new role as a mother, but also because their attention is mainly on their child, and thus not so much on the moment of being photographed. There is less of a photographic performance between the sitter and myself. I have always been interested in questioning the process of the photographic act – of ‘presenting’ oneself for an image of oneself. As a generation that seems to be ‘on air’ constantly in a society which demands permanent communication and information, the camera can become very tiresome. In this series I tried to give space for images of people to be with themselves and for themselves rather than for others. Composition and color are of great importance to me by allowing individuals to become anonymous, sculptural forms intertwined and molded together. Although I work quite formally in this series, what I try to depict is a feeling of something human and authentic.

“Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” —Susan Sontag