The Artist’s Model

Finding a nude photograph was not so easy half a century ago. But for interested parties there were books and magazines with photographic studies of “artists’ models”. Art was one legitimate pretext for looking at nudes. The pertinent publications provided plenty of material to look at. Line and Form was one of them. In a second-hand book market I found a copy of this magazine from the early 1960s. One of its previous owners was apparently not inspired by the photographs. That person’s interventions are the resource of my work.
2016
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 16 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies

The Artist’s Model (2016)

Finding a nude photograph was not so easy half a century ago. But for interested parties there were books and magazines with photographic studies of “artists’ models”. Art was one legitimate pretext for looking at nudes. The pertinent publications provided plenty of material to look at. Line and Form was one of them. In a second-hand book market I found a copy of this magazine from the early 1960s. One of its previous owners was apparently not inspired by the photographs. That person’s interventions are the resource of my work.
Eight pigment ink prints, 40 x 26.5 cm each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP

Kunstgeschichte für alle

Das Pin-Up-Foto hat seinen angestammten Platz in der Boulevardpresse, doch ganz ohne Tarnung kommt es selten daher. Den nackt posierenden Frauen werden Geschichten angedichtet und erzieherische Worte in den Mund gelegt, wobei die Themen dieser kurzen Texte so beliebig wie austauschbar sind – gelegentlich taucht selbst Kunst in diesem Kontext auf. Kunstgeschichte für alle versammelt eine Reihe solch populärer Einführungen in die weite Welt der Kunst, deren auffälligstes Merkmal ist, dass die Porträts ihrer vermeintlichen Autorinnen im Vergleich zum gewohnten Bild der Kunsthistorikerin recht freizügig sind und mehr Raum einnehmen als die knappen Erläuterungen des jeweiligen Gegenstands. Hier reden keine Kunstgeschichtler über weibliche Akte, sondern Akte über Kunstgeschichte.
Die Zeitungsausschnitte stammen aus den 80er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts, der Buchentwurf von 1990.
2013
digital print, colour
29.7 x 21 cm, 28 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
100 copies

Estrelas amadas (2013)

The series Estrelas amadas – Beloved Stars – is based on black and white photographs of movie stars found in a Portuguese magazine from the late 1950s. The former owner of the magazine, a young woman from Lisbon, coloured the lips of all her beloved stars in the brightest red, presumably soon after she acquired the magazine and decades before her copy ended up in a flea market.
Twelve pigment ink prints, 24 x 30 cm each, and one print 60 x 100 cm, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.

Zwölf Frauen

Pixelated portraits of twelve women united by a status unique only to them.
2014 (the 2011/2012 print-on-demand editions are discontinued)
digital print, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 16 pages
softcover, saddle-stitched
50 copies

L.A. Women

In December 2010, Los Angeles Police Department released one hundred and eighty photographs that were found in the possession of a serial murder suspect. All of them are photographs of women. These women may or may not be residents of Los Angeles, they may or may not be prostitutes (as were the women in the investigation). They may or may not be murder victims. We don’t know. We don’t even know whether the arrested suspect took these photographs himself.
Without knowing where the photographs come from, most of them wouldn’t be worth a second glance; for you and me, that is. Of course this is different for friends and family of the women depicted. And it is certainly different for the person who took these pictures. From the testimony of one surviving victim we know that the woman was first photographed, then shot, and then raped before she was dumped in the street.
Most of the women were clearly alive when the photos were taken; some are smiling, some are posing. Some appear to be asleep, they may or may not be sleeping the big sleep. Some of them may have been shot soon after or just before the photographer shot the picture. We don’t know.
It is actually the fact that we don’t know anything – apart from the context where these photographs come from – that makes them so eerie. We want to know more but the pictures don’t tell us. We look at them and they look at us. That’s all there is.
L.A. Women received an honorable mention in the 2011 Photography Book Now competition.
2011
print on demand, colour, uncoated paper
18 x 18 cm, 154 pages
hardcover with dust jacket
open edition
96 €
(a slightly different edition of 50 copies with one extra sheet was launched at the 4th International Photobook Festival Kassel in 2011)

Zwölf Frauen (2011)

Zwölf Frauen is a series of portraits of twelve women united by a status unique only to them.
Twelve pigment ink prints, 40 x 30 cm each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP
A catalogue is available in the series of white books.