Fleeting Impressions Researces on traces of the face in my memory
My examination of the human face began in 2005.After years of working in the world of things, I begin to fill the empty room with a human face: "Trasformazione di Donna: Eli/Anja". The photomontages are created in the darkroom and are exhibited in large format together with sculptures in a project called: "Message from Next Door" www.messagefromnextdoor.com. The barely recognizable face of a woman changes its expression as the texture of the background changes – very much akin to how our faces change in different situations. The face remains fragmentary. It seems to emerge or to disappear – much like in our memories.
The work “on the memory” itself began in 2006: I was searching for possibilities of representing the human face as it appears to me in my memories. Memory is not a realistic picture; it is mixture of unfocused fragments, simplifications, dreams and imaginings. How can all this be reproduced with photography? All this is doesn’t exist outside of me. Is there a way to capture reality, which corresponds to the associations of memories?In the following years, I worked on a several series of photographs, which no longer incorporated the technique of photo-montage:
"Short Stories" 2007-2008 is about the play between reality and illusion: through mirroring, distortion and light reflections, relationships between people are created which, in reality, do not exist. The work is printed on aluminum dibond, or Hahnemühle Papier FineArt in the format 75 x 100cm. The series "Irrgarten" and "Watching Fellow Travelers" ( 2008 ) follow in the same vein- reality and illusion are mixed in the photographs. Dream images are created from real situations, our memories create new fantasies from what is seen.
I am currently working on the series, "Flüchtige Begegnung (Fleeting Encounters)": what is left in my memory from a fleeting encounter with a human being- how can this be shown photographically? I spend time in places where people go past me in a great hurry- in Pisa, Hamburg, and Berlin. Important criteria for choosing which photograph to use from the many taken, are its blurredness, the unclear expression of the face, which still leaves much free room for the imagination and emotions. This work is the most important at the moment and I would like to continue it in various European cities. The completed “fleeting encounters” are to be shown in small format but in a large quantity as a border or a multiple object. |