Anett Stuth

If one looks at the depiction of various phases of life in current artistic portrait photography, as the works in the exhibition reflect, then it is possible to recognize a particular interest in age groups that are normally marked by definitive changes. Phases that are generally seen as psychologically meaningful for the individual such as childhood, puberty, pregnancy/motherhood, become pictorial themes. Corresponding with the socio-politically virulent issue of the rise in average age of the western population, in recent years the theme of aging has become another starting point for photographic confrontations. In the photo series Suche (2000), Annett Struth thematizes the previously mentioned transitional phase of insecurity and identity-seeking of youths on the threshold of adulthood. Struth found her subjects by placing an advertisement in the newspaper in which she asked for young people for nude photographs. The nakedness of those portrayed intensifies the impression of fragility and a certain lack of orientation because it strips them of every possibility to even superficially construct an arrangement of their identity. The few depicted fragments of their private living environments provide a clue to their social backgrounds, yet offer the subjects little support. Facial expression and bodily pose suggest states of mind and feelings somewhere between fragile insecurity and self-confident youthful determination. In the series Ortlos from 1996, Stuths masters thesis at the art university in Leipzig, the artists gaze turned to middle age people who normally do not appear predestined for crucial changes. The unassuming, ordinary appearance of those photographed actually allows us to suspect a certain monotony in their circumstances. The people are photographed in front of anonymous urban architectural situations that are likewise characterized by their uniformity and mediocrity. Part of the series is also made up of still-life-like interior photographs of the private living situations of those portrayed. From time to time, seemingly odd parallels in the gestalt of the form and color ensue between the peoples clothing and the architecture around them. Nonetheless, these people are not spared a certain insecurity in their appearance, which might have something to do with the political situation in eastern Germany. It is precisely this middle generation, who lived the greater part of their lives in the GDR, who found it particularly difficult to cope within a drastically altered society after the political change in 1989. Similar to Tronvoll, a subjective approach to those portrayed that mediates a high degree of authenticity stands in sharp contrast to the photographs objectively neutral form that almost suggests a documentary concept. In the case of both artists, this reveals an affinity with the German portrait photography of the recent decades (Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff). The work of Timm Rautert, whose master class Stuth attended at the academy in Leipzig, is also marked by precise objectivity and documentary observation.

FACE TO FACE 10:
Anett Stuth